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x SHAKSPEARE, 


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S 


Wittiam Suaxsreare, the protagonist on the great 
~arena of modern poetry, and the glory of the human 
intellect, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in the 
county of Warwick, in the year 1564, and upon some 
day, not precisely ascertained, in the month of April. 
It is certain that he was baptized on the 25th; and 
from that fact, combined with some shadow of a tradi- 
tion, Malone has inferred that he was born on.the 23d. 
There is doubtless, on the one hand, no absolute neces- 
sity deducible from law or custom, as either operated 
in those times, which obliges us to adopt such a con- 
clusion; for children might be baptized, and were 
baptized, at various distances from their birth: yet, on 
the other hand, the 23d is as likely to have been the 


~ day as any other; and more likely than any earlier day, 
upon two arguments. First, because there was proba- 


bly a tradition floating in the seventeenth century, 
that Shakspeare died upon his birthday: now it is be- 


yond a doubt that he died upon the 28d of April. 
J ] 


_— 


~_ 


2 SHAKSPEARE. 


& 


Secondly, because it is a reasonable presumption, that 
no parents, living in a simple community, tenderly 
alive to the pieties of household duty, and in an age 
still clinging reverentially to the ceremonial ordinances 
of religion, would much delay the adoption of their 
child into the great family of Christ. Considering the 
extreme frailty of an infant’s life during its,two earliest 
years, to delay would often be to disinherit the child of 
its Christian privileges ; privileges not the less eloquent 
to the feelings from being profoundly mysterious, and, 
in the English church, forced not only upon the atten- 
tion, but even upon the eye of the most thoughtless. 
According to the discipline of the English church, the 
unbaptized are buried with *‘ maimed rites,” shorn of 
their obsequies, and sternly denied that “sweet and 
solemn farewell,’? by which otherwise the church ex- 
presses her final charity with all men; and not only 
so, but they are even locally separated and seques- 
trated. Ground the most hallowed, and populous with 
Christian burials of households, 


*¢'That died in peace with one another, 
Father, sister, son, and brother,” 


opens to receive the vilest malefactor; by which the 
church symbolically expresses her maternal willingness 
to gather back into her fold those even of her flock 
who have strayed from her by the most memorable 
aberrations; and yet, with all this indulgence, she 
banishes to unhallowed ground the innocent bodies of 
the unbaptized. ‘To them and to suicides she turns a 
face of wrath. With this gloomy fact offered to the 
very external senses, it is difficult to suppose that any 


SHAKSPEARE. 3 


parents would risk their own reproaches, by putting 
the fulfilment of so grave a duty on the hazard of a 
convulsion fit. ‘The case of royal children is different ; 
their baptisms, it is true, were often delayed for weeks, 
but the household chaplains of the palace were always 
at hand, night and day, to baptize them in the very 
agonies of death.2 We must presume, therefore, that 
William Shakspeare was born on some day very little 
anterior to that of his baptism; and the more so 
because the season of the year was lovely and genial, 
the 23d of April in 1564, corresponding in fact with 
what we now call the 3d of May, so that, whether the 
child was to be carried abroad, or the clergyman to be 
summoned, no hindrance would arise from the weather. 
One only argument has sometimes struck us for sup- 
posing that the 22d might be the day, and not the 23d ; 
which is, that Shakspeare’s sole granddaughter, Lady 
Barnard, was married on the 22d of April, 1626, ten 
years exactly from the poet’s death; and the reason 
for choosing this day might have had a reference to 
her illustrious grandfather’s birthday, which, there is 
good reason for thinking, would be celebrated as a fes- 
tival in the family for generations. Still this choice may 
have been an accident, or governed merely by reason 
of convenience. And, on the whole, it is as well 
perhaps to acquiesce in the old belief, that Shakspeare 
was born and died on the 23d of April. We cannot 
do wrong if we drink to his memory on both 22d and 
23d. 

On a first review of the circumstances, we have 
reason to feel no little perplexity in finding the mate- 
rials for a life of this transcendent writer so meagre 


4 SHAKSPEARE. 


and so few; and amongst them the larger part of 
doubtful authority. All the energy of curiosity di- 
rected upon this subject, through a period of one 
hundred and fifty years, (for so long it is since Better- 
ton the actor began to make researches,) has availed 
us little or nothing. Neither the local traditions of his 
provincial birthplace, though sharing with London 
through half a century the honor of his familiar pres- 
ence, nor the recollections of that brilliant literary 
circle with whom he lived in the metropolis, have 
yielded much more than such an outline of his history, 
as is oftentimes to be gathered from the penurious 
records of a grave-stone. ‘That he lived, and that he 
died, and that he was “a little lower than the angels; ” 
— these make up pretty nearly the amount of our 
undisputed report. It may be doubted, indeed, whether 
at this day we are as accurately acquainted with the 
life of Shakspeare as with that of Chaucer, though 
divided from each other by an interval of two centu- 
ries, and (what should have been more effectual 
towards oblivion) by the wars of the two roses. And 
yet the traditional memory of a rural and a sylvan 
region, such as Warwickshire at that time was, is 
usually exact as well as tenacious; and, with respect 
to Shakspeare in particular, we may presume it to 
have been full and circumstantial through the genera- 
tion succeeding to his own, not only from the curiosity, 
and perhaps something of a scandalous interest, which 
would pursue the motions of one living so large a part 
of his life at a distance from his wife, but also from 
the final reverence and honor which would settle upon 
the memory of a poet so preéminently successful ; 


4 
SHAKSPEARE. 5 


of one who, in a space of five and twenty years, after 
running a bright career in the capital city of his native 
land, and challenging notice from the throne, had re- 
tired with an ample fortune, created by his personal 
efforts, and by labors purely intellectual. 

How are we to account, then, for that deluge, as if 
from Lethe, which has swept away so entirely the 
traditional memorials of one so illustrious? Such is 
the fatality of error which overclouds every question 
connected with Shakspeare, that two of his principal 
critics, Steevens and Malone, have endeavored to solve 
the difficulty by cutting it with a falsehood. They 
deny in effect that he was illustrious in the century 
succeeding to his own, however much he has since 
become so. We shall first produce their statements in 
their own words, and we shall then briefly review 
them. 

Steevens delivers his opinion in the following terms: 
*¢ Flow little Shakspeare was once read, may be under- 
stood from Tate, who, in his dedication to the altered 
play of King Lear, speaks of the original as an obscure 
piece, recommended to his notice by a friend ; and the 
author of the Tatler, having occasion to quote a few 
lines out of Macbeth, was content to receive them 
from Davenant’s alteration of that celebrated drama, 
in which almost every original beauty is either awk- 
wardly disguised or arbitrarily omitted.” Another 
critic, who cites this passage from Steevens, pursues 
the hypothesis as follows: “In fifty years after his 
death, Dryden mentions that he was then become a 
little obsolete. In the beginning of the last century, 
Lord Shaftesbury complains of his rude unpolished 


6 SHAKSPEARE, 


style, and his antiquated phrase and wit. It is certain 
that, for nearly a hundred years after his death, partly 
owing to the immediate revolution and rebellion, and 
partly to the licentious taste encouraged in Charles II.’s 
time, and perhaps partly to the incorrect state of his 
works, he was ALMOST ENTIRELY NEGLECTED.” ‘This 
critic then goes on to quote with approbation the opin- 
ion of Malone, — “ that if he had been read, admired, 
studied, and imitated, in the same degree as he is now, 
the enthusiasm of some one or other of his admirers in 
the Jast age would have induced him to make some 
inquiries concerning the history of his theatrical career, 
and the anecdotes of his private life.’ After which 
this enlightened writer re-affirms and clenches the 
judgment he has quoted, by saying, — ** His admirers, 
however, if he had admirers in*that age, possessed no 
portion of such enthusiasm.” 

It may, perhaps, be an instructive lesson to young 
readers, if we now show them, by a short sifting of 
these confident dogmatists, how easy it is for a careless 


4 “tar a half-read man to circulate the most absolute false- 
oods under the semblance of truth; falsehoods which 


lia 


impose upon himself as much as they do upon others. 
We believe that not one word or illustration is uttered 
in the sentences cited from these three critics, which is 
not virtually in the very teeth of the truth. 

To begin with Mr. Nahum Tate. This poor grub 
of literature, if he did really speak of Lear as “ an 
obscure piece, recommended to his notice by a friend,” 
of which we must be allowed to doubt, was then utter- 
ing a conscious falsehood. It happens that Lear was 
one of the few Shakspearian dramas which had kept 


SHAKSPEARE. 7 


the stage unaltered. But it is easy to see a mercenary 
motive in such an artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is 
not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they 
are ** well known: ”’ they and their desperate tricks are 
essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in 
the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest 
of travesties, Mr. Nahum’s Lear, would consecrate his 
name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged 
to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he “ flour- 
ished,” if we can use such a phrase of one who was 
always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and 
his Lear, we believe, was arranged in the year 1682. 
But the family to which he belongs is abundantly 
recorded in the Dunciad, and his own name will be 
found amongst its catalogues of heroes. 

With respect to the author of the Tatler, a very 
different explanation is requisite. Steevens means the 
reader to understand Addison; but it does not follow 
that the particular paper in question was from his pen. 
Nothing, however, could be more natural than to quote 
from the common form of the play as then in posses- 
sion of the stage. It was there, beyond a doubt, that a 
fine gentleman living upon town, and not professing 
any deep scholastic knowledge of literature, (a light in 
which we are always to regard the writers of the 
Spectator, Guardian, &c.,) would be likely to have 
learned anything he quoted from Macbeth. This we 
say generally of the writers in those periodical papers ; 
but, with reference to Addison in particular, it is time 
to correct the popular notion of his literary character, 
or at least to mark it by severer lines of distinction. 
It is already pretty well known, that Addison had no 


8 SHAKSPEARE. 


very intimate acquaintance with the literature of his 
own country. It is known, also, that he did not think 
such an acquaintance any ways essential to the char- 
acter of an elegant scholar and Jittérateur. Quite 
enough he found it, and more than enough for the time 
he had to spare, if he could maintain a tolerable 
familiarity with the foremost Latin poets, and a very 
slender one indeed with the Grecian. How slender, 
we can see in his * Travels.”? Of modern authors, 
none as yet had been published with notes, commen- 
tarles, or critical collations of the text; and, accord- 
ingly, Addison looked upon all of them, except those 
few who professed themselves followers in the retinue 
and equipage of the ancients, as creatures of a lower 
race. Boileau, as a mere imitator and propagator of 
Horace, he read, and probably little else amongst the 
French classics. Hence it arose that he took upon 
himself to speak sneeringly of Tasso. To this, which 
was a bold act for his timid mind, he was emboldened 
by the countenance of Boileau. Of the elder Italian 
authors, such as Ariosto, and, a fortiori, Dante, he 
knew absolutely nothing. Passing to our own litera- 
ture, it is certain that Addison was profoundly ignorant 
of Chaucer and of Spenser. Milton only, — and why ? 
simply because he was a brilliant scholar, and stands 
like a bridge between the Christian literature and the 
Pagan,— Addison had read and esteemed. There 
was also in the very constitution of Milton’s mind, in 
the majestic regularity and planetary solemnity of its 
epic movements, something which he could understand 
and appreciate. As to the meteoric and incalculable 
eccentricities of the dramatic mind, as it displayed 


SHAKSPEARE. 9 


itself in the heroic age of our drama, amongst the 
Titans of 1590-1630, they confounded and over- 
whelmed him. 

In particular, with regard to Shakspeare, we shall 
now proclaim a discovery which we made some twenty 
years ago. We, like others, from seeing frequent 
references to Shakspeare in the Spectator, had acqui- 
esced in the common belief, that although Addison was 
no doubt profoundly unlearned in Shakspeare’s lan- 
guage, and thoroughly unable to do him justice, (and 
this we might well assume, since his great rival Pope, 
who had expressly studied Shakspeare, was, after all, 
so memorably deficient in the appropriate knowledge,) 
— yet, that of course he had a vague popular know- 
ledge of the mighty poet’s cardinal dramas. Accident 
only led us into a discovery of our mistake. ‘Twice 
or thrice we had observed, that if Shakspeare were 
quoted, that paper turned out not to be Addison’s ; and 
at length, by express examination, we ascertained the 
curious fact, that Addison has never in one instance 
quoted or made any reference to Shakspeare. But 
was this, as Steevens most disingenuously pretends, to 
be taken as an exponent of the public feeling towards 
Shakspeare? Was Addison’s neglect representative of 
a general neglect? If so, whence came Rowe’s edi- 
tion, Pope’s, Theobald’s, Sir Thomas Hanmer’s, Bishop 
Warburton’s, all upon the heels of one another? With 
such facts staring him in the face, how shameless must 
be that critic who could, in support of such a thesis, 
refer to “the author of the Tatler,’ contemporary 
with all these editors. The truth is, Addison was well 
aware of Shakspeare’s hold on the popular mind; too 


10 SHAKSPEARE. 


well aware of it. The feeble constitution of the poetic 
faculty, as existing in himself, forbade his sympathizing 
with Shakspeare ; the proportions were too colossal for 
his delicate vision; and yet, as one who sought popu- 
larity himself, he durst not shock what perhaps he 
viewed as a national prejudice. ‘Those who have hap- 
pened, like ourselves, to see the effect of passionate 
music and “ deep-inwoven harmonics” upon the feeling 
of an idiot,? may conceive what we mean. Such music 
does not utterly revolt the idiot; on the contrary, it has 
a strange but a horrid fascination for him; it alarms, 
irritates, disturbs, makes him profoundly unhappy ; and 
chiefly by unlocking imperfect glimpses of thoughts 
and slumbering instincts, which it is for his peace to 
have entirely obscured, because for him they can be 
revealed only partially, and with the sad effect of 
throwing a baleful gleam upon his blighted condition. 
Do we mean, then, to compare Addison with an idiot ? 
Not generally, by any means. Nobody can more sin- 
- cerely admire him where he was a man of real genius, 
viz., in his delineations of character and manners, or 
in the exquisite delicacies of his humor. But assuredly 
Addison, as a poet, was amongst the sons of the feeble ; 
and between the authors of Cato and of King Lear 
there was a gulf never to be bridged over.4 

But Dryden, we are told, pronounced Shakspeare 
already in his day ‘a little obsolete.’ Here now we 
have wilful, deliberate falsehood. Obsolete, in Dry- 
den’s meaning, does not imply that he was so with 
regard to his popularity, (the question then at issue,) 
but with regard to his diction and choice of words. 
To cite Dryden as a witness for any purpose against 


SHAKSPEARE. ll 


Shakspeare, — Dryden, who of all men had the most 
ransacked wit and exhausted language in celebrating 
the supremacy of Shakspeare’s genius, does indeed 
require as much shamelessness in feeling as mendacity 
in principle. 

But then Lord Shaftesbury, who may be taken as 
half way between Dryden and Pope, (Dryden died in 
1700, Pope was then twelve years old, and Lord S. 
wrote chiefly, we believe, between 1700 and 1710,) 
**complains,” it seems, ‘‘ of his rude unpolished style, 
and his antiquated phrase and wit.” What if he does ? 
Let the whole truth be told, and then we shall see how 
much stress is to be laid upon such a judgment. The 
second Lord Shaftesbury, the author of the Character- 
istics, was the grandson of that famous political agitator, 
the Chancellor Shaftesbury, who passed his whole life 
in storms of his own creation. The second Lord 
Shaftesbury was a man of crazy constitution, querulous 
from ill health, and had received an eccentric educa- 
tion from his eccentric grandfather. He was practised 
daily in talking Latin, to which afterwards he added a 
competent study of the Greek; and finally he became 
unusually learned for his rank, but the most absolute 
and undistinguishing pedant that perhaps literature has 
to show. He sneers continually at the regular built 
academic pedant; but he himself, though no academic, 
was essentially the very impersonation of pedantry. 
No thought however beautiful, no image however mag- 
nificent, could conciliate his praise as long as it was 
clothed in English; but present him with the most 
trivial common-places in Greek, and he unaffectedly 
fancied them divine; mistaking the pleasurable sense 


IZ SHAKSPEARE. 


of his own power in a difficult and rare accomplish- 
ment for some peculiar force or beauty in the passage. 
Such was the outline of his literary taste. And was 
it upon Shakspeare only, or upon him chiefly, that he 
lavished his pedantry? Far from it. He attacked 
Milton with no less fervor; he attacked Dryden with a 
thousand times more. Jeremy Taylor he quoted only 
to ridicule; and even Locke, the confidential friend of 
his grandfather, he never alludes to without a sneer. 
As to Shakspeare, so far from Lord Shaftesbury’s 
censures arguing his deficient reputation, the very fact 
of his noticing him at all proves his enormous popu- 
larity; for upon system he noticed those only who 
ruled the public taste. The insipidity of his objections 
to Shakspeare may be judged from this, that he com- 
ments in a spirit of absolute puerility upon the name 
Desdemona, as though intentionally formed from the 
Greek word for superstition. In fact, he had evidently 
read little beyond the list of names in Shakspeare ; yet 
there is proof enough that the irresistible beauty of 
what little he had read was too much for all his pedan- 
try, and startled him exceedingly ; for ever afterwards 
he speaks of Shakspeare as one who, with a little aid 
from Grecian sources, really had something great and 
promising about him. As to modern authors, neither 
this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read any thing for 
the latter years of their lives but Bayle’s Dictionary. 
And most of the little scintillations of erudition, which 
may be found in the notes to the Characteristics, and in 
the Essays of Addison, are derived, almost without 
exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, 


from Bayle.® 


SHAKSPEARE. * 13 


Finally, with regard to the sweeping assertion, that 
“for nearly a hundred years after his death Shak- 
speare was almost entirely neglected,” we shall meet 
this scandalous falsehood, by a rapid view of his for- 
tunes during the century in question. The tradition 
has always been, that Shakspeare was honored by the 
especial notice of Queen Elizabeth, as well as by that 
of James [. At one time we were disposed to question 
the truth of this tradition; but that was for want of 
having read attentively the lines of Ben Jonson to the 
memory of Shakspeare, those generous lines which 
have so absurdly been taxed with faint praise. Jonson 
could make no mistake on this point; he, as one of 
Shakspeare’s familiar companions, must have witnessed 
at the very time, and accompanied with friendly sym- 
pathy, every motion of royal favor towards Shakspeare. 
Now he,*’in words which leave no room for doubt, 
exclaims, 

Sweet swan of Avon, what a sight it were 
To see thee in our waters yet appear ; 


And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
That so did take Eliza and our James.” 


These princes, then, were taken, were fascinated, 
with some of Shakspeare’s dramas. In Elizabeth the 
approbation would probably be sincere. In James we 
can readily suppose it to have been assumed ; for he 
was a pedant in a different sense from Lord Shaftes- 
bury ; not from undervaluing modern poetry, but from 
caring little or nothing for any poetry, although he 
wrote about its mechanic rules. Still the royal impri- 
matur would be influential and serviceable no less 
when offered hypocritically than in full sincerity. Next 


14 " SHAKSPEARE. 


let. us consider, at the very moment of Shakspeare’s 
death, who were the leaders of the British youth, the 
principes juventutis, in the two fields, equally impor- 
tant to a great poet’s fame, of rank and of genius. 
The Prince of Wales and John Milton ; the first being 
then about sixteen years old, the other about eight. 
Now these two great powers, as we may call them, 
these presiding stars over all that was English in 
thought and action, were both impassioned admirers of 
Shakspeare. Each of them counts for many thou- 
sands. The Prince of Wales® had learned to appre- 
ciate Shakspeare, not originally from reading him, but 
from witnessing the court representations of his plays 
at Whitehall. Afterwards we know that he made 
Shakspeare his closet companion, for he was _ re- 
proached with doing so by Milton. And we know 
also, from the just criticism pronounced upon the char: 
acter and diction of Caliban by one of Charles’s con- 
fidential counsellors, Lord Falkland, that the king’s 
admiration of Shakspeare had impressed a determina- 
tion upon the court reading. As to Milton, by double 
prejudices, puritanical and classical, his mind had been 
preoccupied against the full impressions of Shakspeare. 
And we know that there is such a thing as keeping the 
sympathies of love and admiration in a dormant state, 
or state of abeyance ; an effort of self-conquest real- 
ized in more cases than one by the ancient fathers, 
both Greek and Latin, with regard to the profane 
classics. Intellectually they admired, and would not 
belie their admiration; but they did not give their 
hearts cordially, they did not abandon themselves to 
their natural impulses. They averted their eyes and 


SHAKSPEARE. 15 


weaned their attention from the dazzling object. Such, 
probably, was Milton’s state of feeling towards Shak- 
speare after 1642, when the theatres were suppressed, 
and the fanatical fervor in its noontide heat. Yet even 
then he did not belie his reverence intellectually for 
Shakspeare ; and in his younger days we know that he 
had spoken more enthusiastically of Shakspeare, than 
he ever did again of any uninspired author. Not only 
did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he 
declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they 
could obtain such a monument in the hearts of men ; 
but he also speaks of him in his J? Penseroso, as the 
tutelary genius of the English stage. In this transmis- 
sion of the torch (Acurradopogie) Dryden succeeds to 
Milton ; he was born nearly thirty years later ; about 
thirty years they were contemporaries ; and by thirty 
years, or nearly, Dryden survived his great leader. 
Dryden, in fact, lived out the seventeenth century. 
And we have now arrived within nine years of the era, 
when the critical editions started in hot succession to 
one another. The names we have mentioned were 
the great influential names of the century. But of 
inferior homage there was no end. How came Bet- 
terton the actor, how came Davenant, how came Rowe, 
or Pope, by their intense (if not always sound) admira- 
tion for Shakspeare, unless they had found it fuming 
upwards like incense to the Pagan deities in ancient 
times, from altars erected at every turning upon all the 
paths of men? 

But it is objected that inferior dramatists were some- 
times preférred to Shakspeare ; and again, that vile 
travesties of Shakspeare were preferred to the authen- 


16 SHAKSPEARE. 


tic dramas. As to the first argument, let it be remem- 
bered, that if the saints of the chapel are always in the 
same honor, because there men are simply discharging 
a duty, which once due will be due for ever; the saints 
of the theatre, on the other hand, must bend to the 
local genius, and to the very reasons for having a 
theatre at all. Men go thither for amusement. This is 
the paramount purpose, and even acknowledged merit 
or absolute superiority must give way to it. Does a 
man at Paris expect to see Moliére reproduced in pro- 
portion to his admitted precedency in the French 
drama? On the contrary, that very precedency argues 
such a familiarization with his works, that those who 
are in quest of relaxation will reasonably prefer any 
recent drama to that which, having lost all its novelty, 
has lost much of its excitement. We speak of ordi- 
nary minds; but in cases of public entertainments, 
deriving part of their power from scenery and stage 
pomp, novelty is for all minds an essential condition of 
attraction. Moreover, in some departments of the 
comic, Beaumont and Fletcher, when writing in com- 
bination, really had a freedom and breadth of manner 
which excels the comedy of Shakspeare. As to the 
altered Shakspeare as taking precedency of the genu- 
ine Shakspeare, no argument can be so frivolous. The 
public were never allowed a choice; the great majority 
of an audience even now cannot be expected to carry 
the real Shakspeare in their mind, so as to pursue a 
comparison between that and the alteration. Their 
comparisons must be exclusively amongst what they 
have opportunities of seeing; that is, between the 
various pieces presented to them by the managers of 


SHAKSPEARE, 14 


theatres. ‘Further than this, it is impossible for them to 
extend their office of judging and collating; and the 
degenerate taste which substituted the caprices of 
Davenant, the rants of Dryden, or the filth of Tate, 
for the jewellery of Shakspeare, cannot with any 
‘justice be charged upon the public, not one in a thou- 
sand of whom was furnished with any means of 
comparing, but exclusively upon those (viz., theatrical 
managers,) who had the very amplest. Yet even in 
excuse for them much may be said. The very length 
of some plays compelled them to make alterations. 
The best of Shakspeare’s dramas, King Lear, is the 
least fitted for representation; and, even for the vilest 
alteration, it ought in candor to be considered that 
possession is nine points of the law. He who would 
not have introduced, was often obliged to retain. 
Finally, it is urged, that the small number of editions 
through which Shakspeare passed in the seventeenth 
century, furnishes a separate argument, and a cenclu- 
sive one against his popularity. We answer, that, 
considering the bulk of. his plays collectively, the 
editions were not few. Compared with any known 
case, the copies sold of Shakspeare were quite as 
many as could be expected under the circumstances. 
Ten or fifteen times as much consideration went to the 
purchase of one great folio like Shakspeare, as would 
attend the purchase of a little volume like Waller or 
Donne. Without reviews, or newspapers, or adver- 
tisements, to diffuse the knowledge of books, the 
progress of literature was necessarily slow, and its 
expansion narrow. But this is a topic which has 
always been treated unfairly, not with regard to Shak- 
2 


18 SHAKSPEARE. 


speare only, but to Milton, as well as many others. 
The truth is, we have not facts enough to guide us; 
for the number of editions often tells nothing accurately 
as to the number of copies. With respect to Shak- 
speare it is certain, that, had his masterpieces been 
gathered into small volumes, Shakspeare would have - 
had a most extensive sale. As it was, there can be 
no doubt, that from his own generation, throughout the 
seventeenth century, and until the eighteenth began to 
accommodate, not any greater popularity in him, but.a 
greater taste for reading in the public, his fame never 
ceased to he viewed as a national trophy of honor; 
and the most illustrious men of the seventeenth century 
were no whit less fervent in their admiration than those 
of the eighteenth and the nineteenth, either as re- 
spected its strength and sincerity, or as respected its 
open profession.’ 

It is therefore a false notion, that the general sympa- 
thy with the merits of Shakspeare ever beat with a 
languid or intermitting pulse. Undoubtedly, in times 
when the functions of critical journals and of news- 
papers were not at hand to diffuse or to strengthen the 
impressions which emanated from the capital, all opin- 
ions must have travelled slowly into the provinces, 
But even then, whilst the perfect organs of communi- 
cation were wanting, indirect substitutes were supplied 
by the necessities of the times, or by the instincts of 
political zeal. Two channels especially lay open 
between the great central organ of the national mind, 
and the remotest provinces. Parliaments were occa- 
sionally summoned, (for the judges’ circuits were too 
brief to produce much effect,) and during their longest 


SHAKSPEARE, 19 


suspensions, the nobility, with large retinues, continu- 
ally resorted to the court. But an intercourse more 
constant and more comprehensive was maintained 
through the agency of the two universities. Already, 
in the time of James I., the growing importance of the 
gentry, and the consequent birth of a new interest in 
political questions, had begun to express itself at 
Oxford, and still more so at Cambridge. Academic 
persons stationed themselves as sentinels at London, 
for the purpose of watching the court and the course 
of public affairs. These persons wrote letters, like 
those of the celebrated Joseph Mede, which we find in 
Ellis’s Historical Collections, reporting to their fellow- 
collegians all the novelties of public life as they arose, 
or personally carried down such reports, and thus 
conducted the general feelings at the centre into lesser 
centres, from which again they were diffused into the 
ten thousand parishes of England; for, (with a very 
few exceptions in favor of poor benefices, Welch or 
Cumbrian,) every parish priest must unavoidably have 
spent his three years at one or other of the English 
universities. And by this mode of diffusion it is, that 
we can explain the strength with which Shakspeare’s 
thoughts and diction impressed themselves from a very 
early period upon the national literature, and even 
more generally upon the national thinking and conver- 
sation.® 

The question, therefore, revolves upon us in three- 
fold difficulty — How, having stepped thus prematurely 
into this inheritance of fame, leaping, as it were, thus 
abruptly into the favor alike of princes and the enemies 
of princes, had it become possible that in his native 


20 SHAKSPEARE. 


place, (honored still more in the final testimonies of 
his preference when founding a family mansion,) such 
a man’s history, and the personal recollections which 
cling so affectionately to the great intellectual poten- 
tates who have recommended themselves by gracious 
manners, could so soon and so utterly have been 
obliterated ? 

Malone, with childish irreflection, ascribes the loss of 
such memorials to the want of enthusiasm in his 
admirers. Local researches into private history had 
not then commenced. Such a taste, often petty © 
enough in its management, was the growth of after 
ages. Else how came Spenser’s life and fortunes to 
be so utterly overwhelmed in oblivion? No poet of a 
high order could be more popular. 

The answer we believe to be this: Twenty-six years 
after Shakspeare’s death commenced the great parlia- 
mentary war. This it was, and the local feuds arising 
to divide family from family, brother from brother, 
upon which we must charge the extinction of traditions 
and memorials, doubtless abundant up to that era. The 
parliamentary contest, it will be said, did not Jast above 
three years; the king’s standard having been first 
raised at Nottingham in August, 1642, and the battle 
of Naseby (which terminated the open warfare) having 
been fought in June, 1645. Or even if we extend its 
duration to the surrender of the last garrison, that war 
terminated in the spring of 1646. And the brief 
explosions of insurrection or of Scottish invasion, 
which occurred on subsequent occasions, were all 
locally confined, and none came near to Warwick- 
shire, except the battle of Worcester, more than five 


SHAKSPEARE. 21 


years after. This is true; but a short war will do 
much to efface recent and merely personal memorials. 
And the following circumstances of the war were even 
more important than the general fact. 

First of all, the very mansion founded by Shak- 
speare became the military head-quarters for the queen 
in 1644, when marching from the eastern coast of 
England to join the king in Oxford; and one such 
special visitation would be likely to do more serious 
mischief in the way of extinction, than many years of 
general warfare. Secondly, as a fact, perhaps, equally 
important, Birmingham, the chief town of Warwick- 
shire, and the adjacent district, the seat of our hard- 
ware manufactures, was the very focus of disaffection 
towards the royal cause. Not only, therefore, would 
this whole region suffer more from internal and sponta- 
neous agitation, but it would be the more frequently 
traversed vindictively from without, and harassed by 
flying parties from Oxford, or others of the king’s 
garrisons. Thirdly, even apart from the political 
aspects of Warwickshire, this county happens to be 
the central one of England, as regards the roads 
between the north and south; and Birmingham has 
long been the great central axis,® in which all the radii 
from the four angles of England proper meet and 
intersect. Mere accident, therefore, of local position, 
much more when united with that avowed inveteracy 
of malignant feeling, which was bitter enough to rouse 
a re-action of bitterness in the mind of Lord Clarendon, 
would go far to account for the wreck of many memo- 
rials relating to Shakspeare, as well as for the subver- 
sion of that quiet and security for humble life, in 


22 SHAKSPEARE. 


which the traditional memory finds its best nidus. 
Thus we obtain one solution, and perhaps the main 
one, of the otherwise mysterious oblivion which had 
swept away all traces of the mighty poet, by the time 
when those quiet days revolved upon England, in 
which again the solitary agent of learned research 
might roam in security from house to house, gleaning 
those personal remembrances which, even in the fury 
of civil strife, might long have lingered by the chimney 
corner. But the fierce furnace of war had probably, 
by its local ravages, scorched this field of natural 
tradition, and thinned the gleaner’s inheritance by three 
parts out of four. This, we repeat, may be one part 
of the solution to this difficult problem. 

And if another is still demanded, possibly it may be 
found in the fact, hostile to the perfect consecration of 
Shakspeare’s memory, that after all he was a player. 
Many a coarse-minded country gentleman, or village 
pastor, who would have held his town glorified by the 
distinction of having sent forth a great judge or an 
eminent bishop, might disdain to cherish the personal 
recollections which surrounded one whom custom 
regarded as little above a mountebank, and the illiberal 
law as a vagabond. The same degrading appreciation 
attached both to the actor in plays and to their author. 
The contemptuous appellation of * play-book,” served 
as readily to degrade the mighty volume which con- 
tained Lear and Hamlet, as that of “ play-actor,” or 
*‘ player-man,” has always served with the illiberal or 
the fanatical to dishonor the persons of Roscius or of 
Garrick, of Talma or of Siddons. Nobody, indeed, 
was better aware of this than the noble-minded Shak- 


SHAKSPEARE, 23 


speare; and feelingly he has breathed forth in his 
sonnets this conscious oppression under which he lay 
of public opinion, unfavorable by a double title to his 
own pretensions ; for, being both dramatic author and 
dramatic performer, he found himself heir to a two- 
fold opprobrium, and at an era of English society 
when the weight of that opprobrium was heaviest. . In 
reality, there was at this period a collision of forces 
acting in opposite directions upon the estimation of the 
stage and scenical art, and therefore of all the ministers 
in its equipage. Puritanism frowned upon these pur- 
suits, as ruinous to public morals; on the other hand, 
loyalty could not but tolerate what was patronized by 
the sovereign; and it happened that Elizabeth, James, 
and Charles I., were all alike lovers and promoters of 
theatrical amusements, which were indeed more indis- 
pensable to the relief of court ceremony, and the 
monotony of aulic pomp, than in any other region of 
life. This royal support, and the consciousness that 
any brilliant success in these arts implied an unusual 
share of natural endowments, did something in mitiga- 
tion of a scorn which must else have been intolerable 
to all generous natures. 

But whatever prejudice might thus operate against 
the perfect sanctity of Shakspeare’s posthumous repu- 
tation, it is certain that the splendor of his worldly 
success must have done much to obliterate that effect ; 
his admirable colloquial talents a good deal, and his 
gracious affability still more. The wonder, therefore, 
will still remain, that Betterton, in less than a century 
from his death, should have been able to glean so 
little. And for the solution of this wonder, we must 


24 SHAKSPEARE, 


throw ourselves chiefly upon the explanations we have 
made as to the parliamentary war, and the local 
ravages of its progress in the very district, of the very 
town, and the very house. 

If further arguments are still wanted to explain this 
mysterious abolition, we may refer the reader to the 
following succession of disastrous events, by which it 
should seem that a perfect malice of misfortune pur- 
sued the vestiges of the mighty poet’s steps. In 1618, 
the Globe theatre, with which he had been so long 
connected, was burned to the ground. Soon afterwards 
a great fire occurred in Stratford ; and next, (without 
counting upon the fire of London, just fifty years after 
his death, which, however, would consume many an 
important record from periods far more remote,) the 
house of Ben Jonson, in which probably, as Mr. Camp- 
bell suggests, might be parts of his correspondence, 
was also burned. Finally, there was an old tradition 
that Lady Barnard, the sole grand-daughter of Shak- 
speare, had carried off many of his papers from 
Stratford, and these papers have never since been 
traced. 

In many of the elder lives it has been asserted, that 
John Shakspeare, the father of the poet, was a butcher, 
and in others that he was a woolstapler. It is now 
settled beyond dispute that he was a glover. ‘This was 
his professed occupation in Stratford, though it is cer- 
tain that, with this leading trade, from which he took 
his denomination, he combined some collateral pur- 
suits; and it is possible enough that, as openings 
offered, he may have meddled with many. In that 
age, and in a provincial town, nothing like the exqui- 


SHAKSPEARE. 25 


site subdivision of labor was attempted which we now 
see realized in the great cities of Christendom. And 
one trade is often found to play into another with so 
much reciprocal advantage, that even in our own days 
we do not much wonder at an enterprising man, in 
country places, who combines several in his own 
person. Accordingly, John Shakspeare is known to 
have united with his town calling the rural and miscel- 
laneous occupations of a farmer. 

Meantime his avowed business stood upon a very 
different footing from the same trade as it is exercised 
in modern times. Gloves were in that age an article 
of dress more costly by much, and more elaborately 
decorated, than in our own. ‘They were a customary 
present from some cities to the judges of assize, and to 
other official persons; a custom of ancient standing, 
and in some places, we believe, still subsisting ; and in 
such cases it is reasonable to suppose, that the gloves 
must originally have been more valuable than the 
trivial modern article of the same name. So also, 
perhaps, in their origin, of the gloves given at funerals. 
In reality, whenever the simplicity of an age makes it 
difficult to renew the parts of a wardrobe, except in 
capital towns of difficult access, prudence suggests that 
such wares should be manufactured of more durable 
materials ; and, being so, they become obviously sus- 
ceptible of more lavish ornament. But it will not 
follow, from this essential difference in the gloves of 
Shakspeare’s age, that the glover’s occupation was 
more lucrative. Doubtless he sold more costly gloves, 
and upon each pair had a larger profit, but for that 
very reason he sold fewer. Two or three gentlemen 


26 | SHAKSPEARE. 


‘of worship” in the neighborhood might occasionally 
require a pair of gloves, but it is very doubtful whether 
any inhabitant of Stratford would ever call for so mere 
a luxury. 

The practical result, at all events, of John Shak- 
speare’s various pursuits, does not appear permanently 
to have met the demands of his establishment, and in 
his maturer years there are indications still surviving 
that he was under a cloud of embarrassment. He 
certainly lost at one time his social position in the town 
of Stratford ; but there is a strong presumption, in our 
construction of the case, that he finally retrieved it; 
and for this retrieval of a station, which he had 
forfeited by personal misfortunes or neglect, he was 
altogether indebted to the filial piety of his immortal 
son. ° 

Meantime the earlier years of the elder Shakspeare 
wore the aspect of rising prosperity, however unsound 
might be the basis on which it rested. ‘There can be 
little doubt that William Shakspeare, from his birth up 
to his tenth or perhaps his eleventh year, lived in care- 
less plenty, and saw nothing in his father’s house but 
that style of liberal house-keeping, which has ever 
distinguished the upper yeomanry and the rural gentry 
of England. Probable enough it is, that the resources 
for meeting this liberality were not strictly commen- 
surate with the family income, but were sometimes 
allowed to entrench, by means of loans or mortgages, 
upon capital funds. The stress upon the family finan- 
ces was perhaps at times severe ; and that it was borne 
at all, must be imputed to the large and even splendid 
portion which John Shakspeare received with his wife. 


SHAKSPEARE. ay 


This lady, for such she really was in an eminent 
sense, by birth as well as by connections, bore the 
beautiful name of Mary Arden, a name derived from 
the ancient forest district !° of the country ; and doubt- 
less she merits a more elaborate notice than our slender 
materials will furnish. To have been the mother of 
Shakspeare, — how august a title to the reverence of 
infinite generations, and of centuries beyond the vision 
of prophecy. A plausible hypothesis has been started 
in modern times, that the facial structure, and that the 
intellectual conformation, may be deduced more fre- 
quently from the corresponding characteristics in the 
mother than in the father. It is certain that no very 
great man has ever existed, but that his greatness has 
been rehearsed and predicted in one or other of his 
parents. And it cannot be denied, that in the most 
eminent men, where we have had the means of pursu- 
ing the investigation, the mother has more frequently 
been repeated and reproduced than the father. We 
have known cases where the mother has furnished all 
the intellect, and the father all the moral sensibility ; 
upon which assumption, the wonder ceases that Cicero, 
Lord Chesterfield, and other brilliant men, who took 
the utmost pains with their sons, should have failed so 
conspicuously ; for possibly the mothers had been 
women of excessive and even exemplary stupidity. 
In the case of Shakspeare, each parent, if we had any 
means of recovering their characteristics, could not fail 
to furnish a study of the most profound interest ; and 
with regard to his mother in particular, if the modern 
hypothesis be true, and if we are indeed to deduce 
from her the stupendous intellect of her son, in that 


28 SHAKSPEARE. 


case she must have been a benefactress to her hus- 
band’s family, beyond the promises of fairy land or the 
dreams of romance; for it is certain that to her chiefly 
this family was also indebted for their worldly comfort. 

Mary Arden was the youngest daughter and the 
heiress of Robert Arden, of Wilmecote, Esq., in the 
county of Warwick. The family of Arden was even 
then of great antiquity. About one century and a 
quarter before the birth of William Shakspeare, a 
person bearing the same name as his maternal grand- 
father had been returned by the commissioners in their 
list of the Warwickshire gentry ; he was there styled 
Robert Arden, Esq., of Bromich. This was in 14338, 
or the 12th year of Henry VI. In Henry VIL.’s reign, 
the Ardens received a grant of lands from the crown ; 
and in 1568, four years after the birth of William 
Shakspeare, Edward Arden, of the same family, was 
sheriff of the county. Mary Arden was, therefore, a 
young lady of excellent descent and connections, and 
an heiress of considerable wealth. She brought to her 
husband, as her marriage portion, the landed estate of 
Asbies, which, upon any just valuation, must be con- 
sidered as a handsome dowry for a woman of her 
station. As this point has been contested, and as it 
goes a great way towards determining the exact social 
position of the poet’s parents, let us be excused for 
sifting it a little more narrowly than might else seem 
warranted by the proportions of our present life. 
Every question which it can be reasonable to raise at 
all, it must be reasonable to treat with at least so much 
of minute research, as may justify the conclusions 
which it is made to support. ; 


SHAKSPEARE. 29 


The estate of Asbies contained fifty acres of arable 
land, six of meadow, and a right of commonage. 
What may we assume to have been the value of its 
fee-simple ? Malone, who allows the total fortune of 
Mary Arden to have been £110. 13s. 4d., is sure that 
the value of Asbies could not have been more than one 
hundred pounds. But why? Because, says he, the 
“average ” rent of land at that time was no more than 
three shillings per acre. This we deny ; but upon that 
assumption, the total yearly rent of fifty-six acres 
would be exactly eight guineas.!!_ And therefore, in 
assigning the value of Asbies at one hundred pounds, 
it appears that Malone must have estimated the land 
at no more than twelve years’ purchase, which would 
carry the value to £100. 16s. ‘ Even at this est- 
mate,” as the latest annotator!* on this subject justly 
observes, “ Mary Arden’s portion was a larger one 
than was usually given to a landed gentlernan’s daugh- 
ter.” But this writer objects to Malone’s principle of 
valuation. ‘* We find,” says he, “that John Shak- 
speare also farmed the meadow of Tugton, containing 
sixteen acres, at the rate of eleven shillings per acre. 
Now what proof has Mr. Malone adduced, that the 
acres of Asbies were not as valuable as those of Tug- 
ton? And if they were so, the former estate must 
have been worth between three and four hundred 
pounds.” In the main drift of his objections we con- 
_ cur with Mr. Campbell. But as they are liable to some 
criticism, let us clear the ground of all plausible cavils, 
and then see what will be the result. Malone, had he 
been alive, would probably have answered, that Tugton 
was a farm specially privileged by nature ; and that if 


30 SHAKSPEARE, 


any man contended for so unusual a rent as eleven 
shillings an acre for land not known to him, the onus 
probandi would lie upon him. Be it so; eleven shil- 
lings is certainly above the ordinary level of rent, but 
three shillings is below it. We contend, that for 
tolerably good land, situated advantageously, that is, 
with a ready access to good markets and good fairs, 
such as those of Coventry, Birmingham, Gloucester, 
.Worcester, Shrewsbury, &c., one noble might be 
assumed as the annual rent; and that in such situations 
twenty years’ purchase was not a valuation, even in 
Elizabeth’s reign, very unusual. Let us, however, 
assume the rent at only five shillings, and land at 
sixteen years’ purchase. Upon this basis, the rent 
would be £14, and the value of the fee simple £224. 
Now, if it were required to equate that sum with its 
present value, a very operose!’ calculation might be 
requisite. But contenting ourselves with the gross 
method of making such equations between 1560 and 
the current century, that is, multiplying by five, we 
shall find the capital value of the estate to be eleven 
hundred and twenty pounds, whilst the annual rent 
would be exactly seventy. But if the estate had been 
sold, and the purchase-money lent upon mortgage, 
(the only safe mode of investing money at that time,) 
the annual interest would have reached £28, equal to 
£140 of modern money ; for mortgages in Elizabeth’s 
age readily produced ten per cent. 

A woman who should bring at this day an annual 
income of £140 toa provincial tradesman, living in a 
sort of rus in urbe, according to the simple fashions of 
rustic life, would assuredly be considered as an excel- 


SHAKSPEARE. 31 


lent match. And there can be little doubt that Mary 
Arden’s dowry it was which, for some ten or a dozen 
years succeeding to his marriage, raised her husband 
to so much social consideration in Stratford. In 1550 
John Shakspeare is supposed to have first settled in 
Stratford, having migrated from some other part of 
Warwickshire. In 1557 he married Mary Arden ; in 
1565, the year subsequent to the birth of his son 
William, his third child, he was elected one of the 
aldermen; and in the year 1568 he became first mag- 
istrate of the town, by the title of high bailiff. This 
year we may assume to have been that in which the 
prosperity of this family reached its zenith ; for in this 
year it was, over and above the presumptions furnished 
by his civic honors, that he obtained a grant of arms from 
Clarencieux of the Heralds’ College. On this occasion 
he declared himself worth five hundred pounds derived 
from his ancestors. And we really cannot understand 
the right by which critics, living nearly three centuries 
from his time, undertake to know his affairs better than 
himself, and to tax him with either inaccuracy or 
falsehood. No man would be at leisure to court 
heraldic honors, when he knew himself to be embar- 
rassed, or apprehended that he soon might be so. A 
man whose anxieties had been fixed at all upon his 
daily livelihood would, by this chase after the aérial 
honors of heraldry, have made himself a butt for 
ridicule, such as no fortitude could enable him to 
sustain. 

In 1568, therefore, when his son William would be 
moving through his fifth year, John Shakspeare, (now 
honored by the designation of Master,) would be found 


382 SHAKSPEARE. 


at times in the society of the neighboring gentry. Ten 
years in advance of this period he was already in 
difficulties. But there is no proof that these difficulties 
had then reached a point of degradation, or of memo- 
rable distress. The sole positive indications of his 
decaying condition are, that in 1578 he received an 
exemption from the small weekly assessment levied 
upon the aldermen of Stratford for the relief of the 
poor ; and that in the following year, 1579, he is found 
enrolled amongst the defaulters in the payment of 
taxes. The latter fact undoubtedly goes to prove that, 
like every man who is falling back in the world, he 
was occasionally in arrears. Paying taxes is not like 
the honors awarded or the processions regulated by 
Clarencieux ; no man is ambitious of precedency there ; 
and if a laggard pace in that duty is to be received as 
evidence of pauperism, nine tenths of the English 
people might occasionally be classed as paupers. 
With respect to his liberation from the weekly assess- 
‘ment, that may beara construction different from the 
one which it has received. This payment, which 
could never have been regarded as a burthen, not 
amounting to five pounds annually of our present 
money, may have been held up as an exponent of 
wealth and consideration; and John Shakspeare may 
have been required to resign it as an honorable distine- 
tion, not suitable to the circumstances of an embar- 
rassed man. Finally, the fact of his being indebted to 
Robert Sadler, a baker, in the sum of five pounds, and 
his being under the necessity of bringing a friend as 
security for the payment, proves nothing at all. There 
is not a town in Europe, in which opulent men cannot 


SHAKSPEARE. 33 


be found that are backward in the payment of their 
debts. And the probability is, that Master Sadler acted 
like most people who, when they suppose a man to be 
going down in the world, feel their respect for him 
sensibly decaying, and think it wise to trample him 
under foot, provided only in that act of trampling they 
can squeeze out of him their own individual debt. 
Like that terrific chorus in Spohr’s oratorio of St. 
Paul, ** Stone him to death,” is the cry of the selfish 
and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the 
just and the unjust amongst debtors. 

It was the wise and beautiful prayer of Agar, ‘* Give 


me neither poverty nor riches; ” 


and, doubtless, for 
quiet, for peace, and the latentis semita vite, that is 
the happiest dispensation. But, perhaps, with a view 
to a school of discipline and of moral fortitude, it might 
be a more salutary prayer, ‘“ Give me riches and 
poverty, and afterwards neither.” For the transitional 
state between riches and poverty will teach a lesson 
both as to the baseness and the goodness of human 
nature, and will impress that lesson with a searching 
force, such as no borrowed experience ever can ap- 
proach. Most probable it is that Shakspeare drew 
some of his powerful scenes in the Timon of Athens, 
those which exhibit the vileness of ingratitude and the 
impassioned frenzy of misanthropy, from his personal 
recollections connected with the case of his own father. 
Possibly, though a cloud of two hundred and seventy 
years now veils it, this very Master Sadler, who was 
so urgent for his five pounds, and who so little 
apprehended that he should be called over the coals 
for it in the Encyclopedia Britannica, may have 
3 


34 SHAKSPEARE. 


sate for the portrait of that Lucullus who says of 
Timon : 

* Alas, good lord! a noble gentleman 
tis, if he would not keep so good a house. Many a time and often 
I have dined with him, and told him on’t; and come again to 
supper to him, of purpose to have him spend less; and yet he 
would embrace no counsel, take no warning by my coming. Every 
yaan has his fault, and honesty is his; I have told him on’t, but I 
could never get him from it.” 


For certain years, perhaps, John Shakspeare moved 
on in darkness and sorrow : 


‘“* His familiars from his buried fortunes 
Slunk all away ; left their false vows with him, 
Like empty purses pick’d; and his poor self, 

A dedicated beggar to the air, 
With his disease of all-shunn’d poverty, 
Walk’d, like contempt, alone.” 


We, however, at this day, are chiefly interested in 
the case as it bears upon the education and youthful 
happiness of the poet. Now if we suppose that from 
1568, the high noon of the family prosperity, to 1578, 
the first year of their mature embarrassments, one half 
the interval was passed in stationary sunshine, and the 
latter half in the gradual twilight of declension, it will 
follow that the young William had completed his tenth 
year before he heard the first signals of distress; and 
for so long a period his education would probably be 
conducted on as liberal a scale as the resources of 
Stratford would allow. Through this earliest section 
of his life he would undoubtedly rank as a gentleman’s 
son, possibly as the leader of his class, in Stratford. 
But what rank he held through the next ten years, or, 
more generally, what was the standing in society of 


Oe ea — 
ee i ae ene oe 


rot Sa 


SHAKSPEARE. 35 


Shakspeare until he had created a new station for him- 
self by his own exertions in the metropolis, is a ques- 
tion yet unsettled, but which has been debated as 
keenly as if it had some great dependencies. Upon | 
this we shall observe, that could we by possibility be 
called to settle beforehand what rank were best for 
favoring the development of intellectual powers, the 
question might wear a face of deep practical impor- 
tance; but when the question is simply as to a matter 
of fact, what was the rank held by a man whose intel- 
lectual development has long ago been completed, this 
becomes a mere question of curiosity. The tree has 
fallen ; it is confessedly the noblest of all the forest ; 
and we must therefore conclude that the soil in which 
it flourished was either the best possible, or, if not so, 
that any thing bad in its properties had been disarmed 
and neutralized by the vital forces of the plant, or by 
the benignity of nature. If any future Shakspeare 
were likely to arise, it might be a problem of great 
interest to agitate, whether the condition of a poor man 
or of a gentleman were best fitted to nurse and stimu- 
late his faculties. But for the actual Shakspeare, since 
what he was he was, and since nothing greater can be 
imagined, it is now become a matter of little moment 
whether his course lay for fifteen or twenty years 
through the humilities of absolute poverty, or through 
the chequered paths of gentry lying in the shade. 
Whatever was, must, in this case at least, have been 
the best, since it terminated in producing Shakspeare ; 
and thus far we must all be optimists. 

Yet still, it will be urged, the curiosity is not illib- 
eral which would seek to ascertain the precise career 


ee 


36 SHAKSPEARE. 


through which Shakspeare ran. This we readily con- 
cede ; and we are anxious ourselves to contribute any 
thing in our power to the settlement of a point so 
obscure. What we have wished to protest against, is 
the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too 
generally been discussed. For, whilst some with a 
foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us 
with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient 
descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and 
rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the 
circumstances which favor the notion of a humble 
station and humble connections ; others, with equal for- 
getfulness of true dignity, plead with the intemperance 
and partiality of a legal advocate for the pretensions 
of Shakspeare to the hereditary rank of gentleman. 
Both parties violate the majesty of the subject. When 
we are seeking for the sources of the Euphrates or the 
St. Lawrence, we look for no proportions to the mighty 
volume of waters in that particular summit amongst 
the chain of mountains which embosoms its earliest 
fountains, nor are we shocked at the obscurity of these 
fountains. Pursuing the career of Mahommed, or of 
any man who has memorably impressed his own mind 
or agency upon the revolutions of mankind, we feel 
solicitude about the circumstances which might sur- 
round his cradle to be altogether unseasonable and 
impertinent. Whether he were born in a hovel or a 
palace, whether he passed his infancy in squalid pov- 
erty, or hedged around by the glittering spears of body- 
guards, as mere questions of fact may be interesting ; 
but, in the light of either accessories or counteragencies 
to the native majesty of the subject, are trivial and 


SHAKSPEARE. O7 


below all philosophic valuation. So with regard to the 
creator of Lear and Hamlet, of Othello and Macbeth ; 
to him from whose golden urns the nations beyond the 
far Alantic, the multitude of the isles, and the genera- 
tions unborn in Australian climes, even to the realms of 
the rising sun (the évarodu j221010,) must in every age 
draw perennial streams of intellectual life, we feel 
that the little accidents of birth and social condition 
are so unspeakably below the grandeur of the theme, 
are so irrelevant and disproportioned to the real interest 
at issue, so incommensurable with any of its relations, 
that a biographer of Shakspeare at once denounces 
himself as below his subject if he can entertain such a 
question as seriously affecting the glory of the poet. 
In some legends of saints, we find that they were born 
with a lambent circle or golden aureola about their 
heads. This angelic coronet shed light alike upon the 
chambers of a cottage or a palace, upon the gloomy 
limits of a dungeon, or the vast expansion of a 
cathedral; but the cottage, the palace, the dungeon, 
the cathedral, were all equally incapable of adding one 
ray of color or one pencil of light to the supernatural 
halo. 

Having, therefore, thus pointedly guarded ourselves 
from misconstruction, and consenting to entertain the 
question as one in which we, the worshippers of Shak- 
speare, have an interest of curiosity, but in which he, 
the object of our worship, has no interest of glory, we 
proceed to state what appears to us the result of the 
scanty facts surviving when collated with each other. 

By his mother’s side, Shakspeare was an authentic 
gentleman. By his father’s he would have stood ina 


38 SHAKSPEARE. 


more dubious position; but the effect of municipal 
honors to raise and illustrate an equivocal rank, has 
always been acknowledged under the popular tenden- 
cies of our English political system. From the sort of 
lead, therefore, which John Shakspeare took at one 
time amongst his fellow-townsmen, and from his rank 
of first magistrate, we may presume that, about the 
year 1568, he had placed himself at the head of the 
Stratford community. Afterwards he continued for 
some years to descend from this altitude; and the 
question is, at what point this gradual degradation may 
be supposed to have settled. Now we shall avow it as 
our opinion, that the composition of society in Stratford 
was such that, even had the Shakspeare family main- 
tained their superiority, the main body of their daily 
associates must still have been found amongst persons 
below the rank of gentry. The poet must inevitably 
have mixed chiefly with mechanics and humble trades- 
men, for such people composed perhaps the total com- 
munity. But had there even been a gentry in Strat- 
ford, since they would have marked the distinctions of 
their rank chiefly by greater reserve of manners, it is 
probable that, after all, Shakspeare, with his enormity 
of delight in exhibitions of human nature, would have 
mostly cultivated that class of society in which the 
feelings are more elementary and simple, in which the 
thoughts speak a plainer language, and in which the 
restraints of factitious or conventional decorum are 
exchanged for the restraints of mere sexual decency. 
It is a noticeable fact to all who have looked upon human 
life with an eye of strict attention, that the abstract image 
of womanhood, in its loveliness, its delicacy, and its 


SHAKSPEARE, 39 


modesty, nowhere makes itself more impressive or more 
advantageously felt than in the humblest cottages, be- 
cause it is there brought into immediate juxtaposition 
with the grossness of manners, and the careless license 
of language incident to the fathers and brothers of the 
house. And this is more especially true in a nation of 
unaffected sexual gallantry,'4 such as the English and 
the Gothic races in general; since, under the immunity 
which their women enjoy from all servile labors of a 
coarse or out-of-doors order, by as much lower as they 
descend in the scale of rank, by so much more do they 
benefit under the force of contrast with the men of 
their own level. A young man of that class, however 
noble in appearance, is somewhat degraded in the eyes 
of women, by the necessity which his indigence im- 
poses of working under a master; but a_ beautiful 
young woman, in the very poorest family, unless she 
enters upon a life of domestic servitude, (in which case 
her labors are light, suited to her sex, and withdrawn 
from the public eye,) so long in fact as she stays under 
her father’s roof, is as perfectly her own mistress and 
sui juris as the daughter of an earl. This personal 
dignity, brought into stronger relief by the mercenary 
employments of her male connections, and the femi- 
nine gentleness of her voice and manners, exhibited 
under the same advantages of contrast, oftentimes gom- 
bine to make a young cottage beauty as fascinating an 
object as any woman of any station. 

Hence we may in part account for the great event of 
Shakspeare’s early manhood, his premature marriage. 
It has always been known, or at least traditionally 
received for a fact, that Shakspeare had married whilst 


40 SHAKSPEARE. 


yet a boy, and that his wife was unaccountably older 
than himself. In the very earliest biographical sketch 
of the poet, compiled by Rowe, from materials col- 
lected by Betterton the actor, it was stated, (and that 
statement is now ascertained to have been correct,) that 
he had married Anne Hathaway, “ the daughter of a 
substantial yeoman.” Further than this nothing was 
known. But in September, 1836, was published a 
very remarkable document, which gives the assurance 
of law to the time and fact of this event, yet still, 
unless collated with another record, does nothing to 
lessen the mystery which had previously surrounded its 
circumstances. This document consists of two parts ; 
the first, and principal, according to the logic of the 
case, though second according to the arrangement, 
being a license for the marriage of William Shakspeare 
with Anne Hathaway, under the condition * of once 
asking of the bannes of matrimony,” that is, in effect, 
dispensing with two out of the three customary ask- 
ings; the second or subordinate part of the document 
being a bond entered into by two sureties, viz.: Fulke 
Sandells and John Rychardson, both described as 
agricole or yeomen, and both marksmen, (that is, 
incapable of writing, and therefore subscribing by 
means of marks,) for the payment of forty pounds 
sterling, in the event of Shakspeare, yet a minor, and 
incapable of binding himself, failing to fulfil the condi- 
tions of the license. In the bond, drawn up in Latin, 
there is no mention of Shakspeare’s name ; but in the 
license, which is altogether English, his name, of 
course, stands foremost; and as it may gratify the 
reader to see the very words and orthography of the 


SHAKSPEARE. 41 


original, we here extract the operative part of this 
document, prefacing only, that the license is attached 
by way of explanation to the bond. ‘ The condition 
of this obligation is suche, that if hereafter there shall 
not appere any lawfull lett or impediment, by reason of 
any precontract, &c., but that Willm. Shagspere, one 
thone ptie,” [on the one party,] ‘and Anne Hathwey 
of Stratford, in the diocess of Worcester, maiden, may 
lawfully solemnize matrimony together; and in the 
same afterwards remaine and continew like man and 
wiffe. And, moreover, if the said Willm. Shagspere 
do not proceed to solemnization of mariadg with the 
said Anne Hathwey, without the consent of hir frinds ; 
— then the said obligation ” [viz., to pay forty pounds] 
“to be voyd and of none effect, or els to stand & 
abide in full force and vertue.” 

What are we to think of this document? ‘Trepida- 
tion and anxiety are writtten upon its face. The 
parties are not to be married by a special license ; not 
even by an ordinary license ; in that case no proclama- 
tion of banns, no public asking at all, would have been 
requisite. Economical scruples are consulted; and 
yet the regular movement of the marriage “ through 
the bell-ropes”!5 is disturbed. Economy, which 
retards the marriage, is here evidently in collision with 
some opposite principle which precipitates it. How is 
all this to be explained? Much light is afforded by the 
date when illustrated by another document. The bond 
bears date on the 28th day of November, in the 25th 
year of our lady the queen, that is, in 1582. Now 
the baptism of Shakspeare’s eldest child, Susanna, is 
registered on the 26th of May in the year following. 


42 SHAKSPEARE. 


Suppose, therefore, that his marriage was solemnized 
on the Ist day of December ; it was barely possible 
that it could be earlier, considering that the sureties, 
drinking, perhaps, at Worcester throughout the 28th of 
November, would require the 29th, in so dreary a 
season, for their return to Stratford; after which some 
preparation might be requisite to the bride, since the 
marriage was not celebrated at Stratford. Next sup- 
pose the birth of Miss Susanna to have occurred, like 
her father’s, two days before her baptism, viz., on the 
24th of May. From December the Ist to May the 
24th, both days inclusively, are one hundred and 
seventy-five days; which, divided by seven, gives 
precisely twenty-five weeks, that is to say, six months 
short by one week. Oh, fie, Miss Susanna, you came 
rather before you were wanted. 

Mr. Campbell’s comment upon the affair is, that ‘* if 
this was the case,” viz., if the baptism were really 
solemnized on the 26th of May, “ the poet’s first child 
would appear to have been born only six months and 
eleven days after the bond was entered into.” And 
he then concludes that, on this assumption, “ Miss 
Susanna Shakspeare came into the world a little pre- 
maturely.” But this is to doubt where there never was 
any ground for doubting ; the baptism was certainly on 
the 26th of May; and, in the next place, the calcula- 
tion of six months and eleven days is sustained by 
substituting lunar months for calendar, and then only 
by supposing the marriage to have been celebrated on 
the very day of subscribing the bond in Worcester, and 
the baptism to have been coincident with the birth; of 
which suppositions the latter is improbable, and the 


SHAKSPEARE. 45 
former, considering the situation of Worcester, impos- 
sible. 

Strange it is, that, whilst all biographers have 
worked with so much zeal upon the most barren dates 
or most baseless traditions in the great poet’s life, 
realizing in a manner the chimeras of Laputa, and 
endeavoring “ to extract sunbeams from cucumbers,” 
such a story with regard to such an event, no fiction of 
village scandal, but involved in legal documents, a 
story so significant and so eloquent to the intelligent, 
should formerly have been dismissed without notice of 
any kind, and even now, after the discovery of 1836, 
with nothing beyond a slight conjectural insinuation. 
For our parts, we should have been the last amongst 
the biographers to unearth any forgotten scandal, or, 
after so vast a lapse of time, and when the grave had 
shut out all but charitable thoughts, to point any moral 
censures at a simple case of natural frailty, youthful 
precipitancy of passion, of all trespasses the most 
venial, where the final intentions are honorable. But 
in this case there seems to have been something more 
in motion than passion or the ardor of youth. ‘TI like 
not,” says Parson Evans, (alluding to Falstaff in mas- 
querade,) “I like not when a woman has a great 
peard; I spy a great peard Under her muffler.” 
Neither do we like the spectacle of a mature young 
woman, five years past her majority, wearing the 
semblance of having been led astray by a boy who 
had still two years and a half to run of his minority. 
Shakspeare himself, looking back on this part of his 
youthful history from his maturest years, breathes forth 
pathetic counsels against the errors into which his own 


44 SHAKSPEARE. 


inexperience had been insnared. ‘The disparity of 
years between himself and his wife he notices in a 
beautiful scene of the Twelfth Night. The Duke 
Orsino, observing the sensibility which the pretended 
Cesario had betrayed on hearing some touching old 
snatches of a love strain, swears that his beardless page 
must have felt the passion of love, which the other 
admits. Upon this the dialogue proceeds thus : 


* Duke. What kind of woman is’t ? 


Viola. Of your complexion. 
Duke. She is not worth thee then. What years? 
Viola. I faith, 


About your years, my lord. 
Duke. Too old, by heaven. Let still the woman take 
An elder than herself: so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband’s heart. 
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, 
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, 
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, 
Than women’s are. 
Viola. I think it well, my lord. 
Duke. Then let thy love be younger than thyself, 
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent ; 
For women are as roses, whose fair flower, 
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.” 


These counsels were uttered nearly twenty years 
after the event in his own life, to which they probably 
look back; for this” play is supposed to have been 
written in Shakspeare’s thirty-eighth year. And we 
may read an earnestness in pressing the point as to the 
inverted disparity of years, which indicates pretty 
clearly an appeal to the lessons of his personal experi- 
ence. But his other indiscretion, in having yielded so 
far to passion and opportunity as to crop by prelibation, 
and before they were hallowed, those flowers of para- 


SHAKSPEARE. 45 


dise which belonged to his marriage day; this he 
adverts to with even more solemnity of sorrow, and 
with more pointed energy of moral reproof, in the very 
last drama which is supposed to have proceeded from 
his pen, and therefore with the force and sanctity of 
testamentary counsel. ‘The Tempest is all but ascer- 
tained to have been composed in 1611, that is, about 
five years before the poet’s death; and indeed could 
not have been composed much earlier; for the very 
incident which suggested the basis of the plot, and of 
the local scene, viz., the shipwreck of Sir George 
Somers on the Bermudas, (which were in consequence 
denominated the Somers’ Islands,) did not occur until 
the year 1609. In the opening of the fourth act, 
Prospero formally betrothes his daughter to Ferdinand ; 
and in doing so he pays the prince a well-merited com- 
pliment of having “ worthily purchas’d” this rich 
jewel, by the patience with which, for her sake, he had 
supported harsh usage, and other painful circumstances 
of his trial. But, he adds solemnly, 


‘Tf thou dost break her virgin knot before 
All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
With full and holy rite be minister’d ; ” 


in that case what would follow ? 


“ No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall, 
To make this contract grow ; but barren hate, 
Sour-ey’d disdain and discord, shall bestrew 
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed, 
As Hymen’s lamps shall light you. ” 


The young prince assures him in reply, that no 


46 SHAKSPEARE. 


strength of opportunity, concurring with the uttermost 
temptation, not 


‘‘the murkiest den, 
The most opportune place, the strong’st suggestion 
Our worser genius ean - re! 


should ever prevail to lay asleep his jealousy of self- 
control, so as to take any advantage of Miranda’s 
innocence. And he adds an argument for this absti- 
nence, by way of reminding Prospero, that not honor 
only, but even prudential care of his own happiness, is 
interested in the observance of his promise. Any 
unhallowed anticipation would, as he insinuates, 
“take away 

The edge of that day’s celebration, 

When I shall think, or Pheebus’ steeds are founder’d, 

Or night kept chain’d below ; ” 
that is, when even the winged hours would seem to 
move too slowly. Even thus Prospero is not quite 
satisfied. During his subsequent dialogue with Ariel, 
Wwe are to suppose that Ferdinand, in conversing apart 
with Miranda, betrays more impassioned ardor than the 
wise magician altogether approves. The prince’s 
caresses have not been unobserved ; and thus Prospero 
renews his warning: 

‘Look thou be true: do not give dalliance 

Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw 

To the fire i’ the blood: be more abstemious, 

Or else — good night your vow.” 
The royal lover reassures him of his loyalty to his 
engagements ; and again the wise father, so honorably 
jealous for his daughter, professes himself satisfied 
with the prince’s pledges. 

Now in all these emphatic warnings, uttering the 


SHAKSPEARE. 47 


language ‘‘of that sad wisdom folly leaves behind,” 
who can avoid reading, as in subtle hieroglyphics, the 
secret record of Shakspeare’s own nuptial disappoint- 
ments? We, indeed, that is, universal posterity 
through every age, have reason to rejoice in these dis- 
appointments ; for to them, past all doubt, we are 
indebted for Shakspeare’s subsequent migration to 
London, and his public occupation, which, giving him a 
deep pecuniary interest in the productions of-his pen, 
such as no other literary application of his powers 
could have approached in that day, were eventually the 
means of drawing forth those divine works which have 
survived their author for our everlasting benefit. 

Our own reading and deciphering of the whole case 
is as follows. The Shakspeares were a handsome 
family, both father and sons. This we assume upon 
the following grounds: First, on the presumption 
arising out of John Shakspeare’s having won the favor 
of a young heiress higher in rank than himself; 
secondly, on the presumption involved in the fact of 
three amongst his four sons having gone upon the 
stage, to which the most obvious (and perhaps in those 
days a sine qua non) recommendation would be a good 
person and a pleasing countenance ; thirdly, on the 
direct evidence of Aubrey, who assures us that Wil- 
liam Shakspeare was a handsome and a well-shaped 
man ; fourthly, on the implicit evidence of the Strat- 
ford monument, which exhibits a man of good figure 
and noble countenance ; fifthly, on the confirmation of 
this evidence by the Chandos portrait, which exhibits 
noble features, illustrated by the utmost sweetness of 
expression ; sixthly, on the selection of theatrical parts, 


* 


48 SHAKSPEARE. 


which it is known that Shakspeare personated, most of 
them being such as required some dignity of form, viz., 
kings, the athletic (though aged) follower of an ath- 
letic young man, and supernatural beings. On these 
grounds, direct or circumstantial, we believe ourselves 
warranted in assuming that William Shakspeare was a 
handsome and even noble looking boy. Miss Anne 
Hathaway had herself probably some personal attrac- 
tions; and, if an indigent girl, who looked for no 
pecuniary advantages, would probably have been early 
sought in marriage. But as the daughter of ‘a sub- 
stantial yeoman,” who would expect some fortune in 
his daughter’s suitors, she had, to speak coarsely, a 
little outlived her market. ‘Time she had none to lose. 
William Shakspeare pleased her eye; and the gentle- 
ness of his nature made him an apt subject for female 
blandishments, possibly for female arts. Without 
imputing, however, to this Anne Hathaway any thing 
so hateful as a settled plot for insnaring him, it was 
easy enough for a mature woman, armed with such 
inevitable advantages of experience and of self-posses- 
sion, to draw onward a blushing novice; and, without 
directly creating opportunities, to place him in the way 
of turning to account such as naturally offered. Young 
boys are generally flattered by the condescending 
notice of grown-up women; and perhaps Shakspeare’s 
own lines upon a similar situation, to a young boy 
adorned with the same natural gifts as himself, may 
give us the key to the result : 


-~ 


‘Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won; 
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail’d; 
And, when a woman woos, what woman’s son 
Will sourly leave her till he have prevail’d ? ” 


SHAKSPEARE. 49 


Once, indeed, entangled in such a pursuit, any person 
of manly feelings would be sensible that he had no 
retreat ; that would be — to insult a woman, grievously: 
to wound her sexual pride, and to insure her lasting 
scorn and hatred. These were consequences which 
the gentle-minded Shakspeare could not face. He 
pursued his good fortunes, half perhaps in heedless- 
ness, half in desperation, until he was roused by the 
clamorous displeasure of her family upon first discover- 
ing the situation of their kinswoman. For such a 
situation there could be but one atonement, and that 
was hurried forward by both parties; whilst, out of 
delicacy towards the bride, the wedding was not cele- 
brated in Stratford, (where the register contains no 
notice of such an event); nor, as Malone imagined, in 
Weston-upon-Avon, that being in the diocese of Glou- 
cester ; but in some parish, as yet undiscovered, in the 
diocese of Worcester. 

But now arose a serious question as to the future 
maintenance of the young people. John Shakspeare 
was depressed in his circumstances, and he had other 
children besides William, viz., three sons and a daugh- 
ter. The elder lives have represented him as burdened 
with ten; but this was an error, arising out of the con- 
fusion between John Shakspeare the glover, and John 
Shakspeare a shoemaker. This error has been thus 
far of use, that, by exposing the fact of two John 
Shakspeares (not kinsmen) residing in Stratford-upon- 
Avon, it has satisfactorily proved the name to be 
amongst those which are locally indigenous to War- 
wickshire. Meantime it is now ascertained that John 
Shakspeare the glover had only eight children, viz., 

4 


50 SHAKSPEARE, 


four daughters and four sons. The order of their 
succession was this: Joan, Margaret, WiLu1am, Gilbert, 
a second Joan, Anne, Richard, and Edmund. Three 
of the daughters, viz., the two eldest of the family, 
Joan and Margaret, together with Anne, died in child- 
hood. All the rest attained mature ages, and of these 
William was the eldest. This might give him some 
advantage in his father’s regard; but in a question of 
pecuniary provision precedency amongst the children 
of an insolvent is nearly nominal. For the present 
John Shakspeare could do little for his son; and, under 
these circumstances, perhaps the father of Anne Hath- 
away would come forward to assist the new-married 
couple. This condition of dependency would furnish 
matter for painful feelings and irritating words. The 
youthful husband, whose mind would be expanding as 
rapidly as the leaves and blossoms of spring-time in 
polar latitudes, would soon come to appreciate the sort 
of wiles by which he had been caught. The female 
mind is quick, and almost gifted with the power of 
witchcraft, to decipher what is passing in the thoughts 
of familiar companions. Silent and forbearing as Wil- 
liam Shakspeare might be, Anne, his staid wife, would 
read his secret reproaches; ill would she dissemble 
her wrath, and the less so from the consciousness of 
having deserved them. It is no uncommon case for 
women to feel anger in connection with one subject, 
and to express it in connection with another; which 
other, perhaps, (except as a serviceable mask,) would 
have been a matter of indifference to their feelings. 
Anne would, therefore, reply to those inevitable re- 
proaches which her own sense must presume to be 


SHAKSPEARE. , 51 


lurking in her husband’s heart, by others equally 
stinging, on his inability to support his family, and on 
his obligations to her father’s purse. Shakspeare, we 
may be sure, would be ruminating every hour on the 
means of his deliverance from so painful a depen- 
dency ; and at length, after four years’ conjugal dis- 
cord, he would resolve upon that plan of solitary 
emigration to the metropolis, which, at the same time 
that it released him from the humiliation of domestic 
feuds, succeeded so splendidly for his worldly pros- 
perity, and with a train of consequences so vast for all 
future ages. , 

Such, we are persuaded, was the real course of 
Shakspeare’s transition from school-boy pursuits to his 
public career. And upon the known temperament of 
Shakspeare, his genial disposition to enjoy life without 
disturbing his enjoyment by fretting anxieties, we build 
the conclusion, that had his friends furnished him with 
ampler funds, and had his marriage been well assorted 
or happy, we — the world of posterity — should have 
lost the whole benefit and delight which we have since 
reaped from his matchless faculties. The motives 
which drove him from Stratford are clear enough ; but 
what motives determined his course to London, and 
especially to the stage, still remains to be explained. 
Stratford-upon-Avon, lying in the high road from Lon- 
don through Oxford to Birmingham, (or more generally 
to the north,) had been continually visited by some of 
the best comedians during Shakspeare’s childhood. 
One or two of the most respectable metropolitan actors 
were natives of Stratford. These would be well 
known to the elder Shakspeare. But, apart from that 


U. OF ILL. LIB. 


52 ; SHAKSPEARE. 


accident, it is notorious that mere legal necessity and 
usage would compel all companies of actors, upon 
coming into any town, to seek, in the first place, from 
the chief magistrate, a license for opening a theatre, 
and next, over and above this public sanction, to seek 
his personal favor and patronage. As an alderman, 
therefore, but still more whilst clothed with the official 
powers of chief magistrate, the poet’s father would 
have opportunities of doing essential services to many 
persons connected with the London stage. The con- 
versation of comedians acquainted with books, fresh 
from the keen and sparkling circles of the metropolis, 
and filled with racy anecdotes of the court, as well as 
of public life generally, could not but have been fasci- 
nating, by comparison with the stagnant socicty of 
Stratford. Hospitalities on a liberal scale would be 
offered to these men. Not impossibly this fact might 
be one principal key to those dilapidations which the 
family estate had suffered. These actors, on their 
part, would retain a grateful sense of the kindness they 
had received, and would seek to repay it to John Shak- 
speare, now that he was depressed in his fortunes, as 
opportunities might offer. His eldest son, growing up 
a handsome young man, and beyond all doubt from his 
earliest days of most splendid colloquial powers, (for 
assuredly of him it may be taken for granted, 


“ Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre,)” 


would be often reproached ina friendly way for burying 
himself in a country life. These overtures, prompted 
alike by gratitude to the father, and a real selfish inter- 
est in the talents of the son, would at length take a 


SHAKSPEARE. 53 


definite shape ; and, upon some clear understanding as 
to the terms of such an arrangement, William Shak- 
speare would at length, (about 1586, according to the 
received account, that is, in the fifth year of his mar- 
ried life, and the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of his 
age,) unaccompanied by wife or children, translate 
himself to London. Later than 1586 it could not well 
be; for already in 1589 it has been recently ascer- 
tained that he held a share in the property of a leading 
theatre. 

We must here stop to notice, and the reader will 
allow us to notice with summary indignation, the 
slanderous and idle tale which represents Shakspeare 
as having fled to London in the character of a criminal, 
from the persecutions of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charle- 
cot. This tale has long been propagated under two 
separate impulses. Chiefly, perhaps, under the vulgar 
love of pointed and glaring contrasts ; the splendor of 
the man was in this instance brought into a sort of 
epigrammatic antithesis with the humility of his for- 
tunes; secondly, under a baser impulse, the malicious 
pleasure of seeing a great man degraded. Accord- 
ingly, as in the case of Milton,!® it has been affirmed 
that Shakspeare had suffered corporal chastisement, in 
fact, (we abhor to utter such words,) that he had been 
judicially whipped. Now, first of all, let us mark the 
inconsistency of this tale. ‘The poet was whipped, 
that is, he was punished most disproportionately, and 
yet he fled to avoid punishment. Next, we are in- 
formed that his offence was deer-stealing, and from the 
park of Sir Thomas Lucy. And it has been well 
ascertained that Sir Thomas had no deer, and had no 


=~ 


54 SHAKSPEARE. 


park. Moreover, deer-stealing was regarded by our 
ancestors exactly as poaching is regarded by us. Deer 
ran wild in all the great forests; and no offence was 
looked upon as so venial, none so compatible with a 
noble Robin-Hood style of character, as this very 
trespass upon what were regarded as fere natura, and 
not at all as domestic property. But had it been other- 
wise, a trespass was not punishable with whipping ; 
nor had Sir ‘Thomas Lucy the power to irritate a whole 
community like Stratford-upon-Avon, by branding with 
permanent disgrace a young man so closely connected 
with three at least of the best families in the neighbor- 
hood. Besides, had Shakspeare suffered any dishonor 
of that kind, the scandal would infallibly have pursued 
him at his very heels to London; and in that case 
Greene, who has left on record, in a posthumous work 
of 1592, his malicious feelings towards Shakspeare, 
could not have failed to notice it. For, be it remem- 
bered, that a judicial flagellation contains a twofold 
ignominy. Flagellation is ignominious in its own 
nature, even though unjustly inflicted, and by a ruffian ; 
secondly, any judicial punishment is ignominous, even 
though not wearing a shade of personal degradation. 
Now a judicial flagellation includes both features of 
dishonor. And is it to be imagined that an enemy, 
searching with the diligence of malice for matter 
against Shakspeare, should have failed, six years after 
the event, to hear of that very memorable disgrace 
which had exiled him from Stratford, and was the very 
occasion of his first resorting to London; or that a 
leading company of players in the metropolis, one of 
whom, and a chief one, was his own townsman, should 


SHAKSPEARE. 55 


cheerfully adopt into their society, as an honored 
partner, a young man yet flagrant from the lash of the 
executioner or the beadle ? 

This tale is fabulous, and rotten to its core; yet 
even this does less dishonor to Shakspeare’s memory 
than the sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous 
rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its 
brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that 
we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has 
been imputed to Shakspeare ever since the days of the 
credulous Rowe. The total point of this idiot’s drivel 
consists in calling Sir Thomas ‘ an asse ;” and well it 
justifies the poet’s own remark, ‘ Let there be gall 
enough in thy ink, no matter though thou write with a 
goose pen.” Our own belief is, that these lines were 
a production of Charles Il.’s reign, and applied to a 
Sir Thomas Lucy, not very far removed, if at all, from . 
the age of him who first picked up the pecious filth. 
The phrase “ parliamént member,” we believe to be 
quite unknown in the colloquial use of Queen Eliza- 
beth’s reign. 

But, that we may rid ourselves once and for ever of 
this outrageous calumny upon Shakspeare’s memory, 
we shall pursue the story to its final stage. Even 
Malone has been thoughtless enough to accredit this 
closing chapter, which contains, in fact, such a super- 
fetation of folly as the annals of human dullness do not 
exceed. Let us recapitulate the points of the story. 
A baronet, who has no deer and no park, is supposed 
to persecute a poet for stealing these aerial deer out of 
this aerial park, both lying in nephelococcygia. ‘The 
poet sleeps upon this wrong for eighteen years ; but at 


56 SHAKSPEARE. 


length, hearing that his persecutor is dead and buried, 
he conceives bloody thoughts of revenge. And this 
revenge he purposes to execute by picking a hole in 
his dead enemy’s coat-of-arms. Is this coat-of-arms, 
then, Sir Thomas Lucy’s? Why, no; Malone admits 
that it is not. For the poet, suddenly recollecting that 
this ridicule would settle upon the son of his enemy, 
selects another coat-of-arms, with which his dead 
enemy never had any connection, and he spends his 
thunder and lighting upon this irrelevant object; and, 
after all, the ridicule itself lies in a Welchman’s mis- 
pronouncing one single heraldic term —a Welchman 
who mispronounces all words. The last act of the 
poet’s malice recalls to us a sort of jest-book story of 
an Irishman, the vulgarity of which the reader will 
pardon in consideration of its relevancy. The Irish- 
man having lost a pair of silk stockings, mentions to a 
friend that he has taken steps for recovering them by 
an advertisement, offering a reward to the finder. His 
friend objects that the costs of advertising, and the 
reward, would eat out the full valtie of the silk stock- 
ings. But to this the Irishman replies, with a knowing 
air, that he is not so green as to have overlooked that ; 
and that, to keep down the reward, he had advertised 
the stockings as worsted. Not at all less flagrant is the 
bull ascribed to Shakspeare, when he is made to punish 
a dead man by personalities meant for his exclusive 
ear, through his coat-of-arms, but at the same time, 
with the express purpose of blunting and defeating the 
edge of his own scurrility, is made to substitute for the 
real arms some others which had no more relation to 
the dead enemy than they had to the poet himself, 


SHAKSPEARE, 57 


This is the very sublime of folly, beyond which human 
dotage cannot advance. 

It is painful, indeed, and dishonorable to human 
nature, that whenever men of vulgar habits and of 
poor education wish to impress us with a feeling of 
respect for a man’s talents, they are sure to cite, by 
way of evidence, some gross instance of malignity. 
Power, in their minds, is best illustrated by malice or 
by the infliction of pain. To this unwelcome fact we 
have some evidence in the wretched tale which we 
have just dismissed; and there is another of the same 
description to be found in all lives of Shakspeare, 
which we will expose to the contempt of the reader 
whilst we are in this field of discussion, that we may 
not afterwards have to resume so disgusting a subject. 

This poet, who was a model of gracious benignity in 
his manners, and of whom, amidst our general igno- 
rance, thus much is perfectly established, that the term 
gentle was almost as generally and by prescriptive 
right associated with his name as the affix of venerable 
with Bede, or judicious with Hooker, is alleged to have 
insulted a friend by an imaginary epitaph beginning 
“ Ten in the Hundred,” and supposing him to be 
damned, yet without wit enough (which surely the 
Stratford bellman could have furnished) for devising 
any, even fanciful, reason for such a supposition ; upon 
which the comment of some foolish critic is, ** The 
sharpness of the satire is said to have stung the man 
so much that he never forgave it.” We have heard of 
the sting in the tail atoning for the brainless head; but 
in this doggerel the tail is surely as stingless as the 
head is brainless. For, lst, Ten in the Hundred could 


58 SHAKSPEARE. 


be no reproach in Shakspeare’s time, any more than to 
call a man Three-and-a-half-per-cent. in this present 
year, 1838; except, indeed, amongst those foolish 
persons who built their morality upon the Jewish cere- 
monial law. Shakspeare himself took ten per cent. 
2Qdly, It happens that John Combe, so far from being 
the object of the poet’s scurrility, or viewing the poet 
as an object of implacable resentment, was a Stratford 
friend; that one of-his family was affectionately 
remembered in Shakspeare’s will by the bequest of 
his sword; and that John Combe himself recorded his 
perfect charity with Shakspeare by leaving him a 
legacy of £5 sterling. And in this lies the key to the 
whole story. For, 3dly, The four lines were written 
and printed before Shakspeare was born. The name 
Combe is a common one; and some stupid fellow, who 
had seen the name in Shakspeare’s will, and happened 
also to have seen the lines in a collection of epigrams, 
chose to connect the cases by attributing an identity to 
the two John Combes, though at war with chronology. 

Finally, there is another specimen of doggerel attri- 
buted to Shakspeare, which is not equally unworthy 
of him, because not equally malignant, but otherwise 
equally below his intellect, no less than his scholarship ; 
we mean the inscription on his grave-stone. ‘This, as 
a sort of siste viator appeal to future sextons, is worthy 
of the grave-digger or the parish-clerk, who was prob- 
ably its author. Or it may have been an antique 
formula, like the vulgar record of ownership in 
books — 


“ Anthony Timothy Dolthead’s book, 
God give him grace therein to look.” 


SHAKSPEARE. 59 


Thus far the matter is of little importance; and it 
might have been supposed that malignity itself could 
hardly have imputed such trash to Shakspeare. But 
when we find, even in this short compass, scarcely 
wider than the posy of a ring, room found for traduc- 
ing the poet’s memory, it becomes important to say, 
that the leading sentiment, the horror expressed at any 
disturbance offered to his bones, is not one to which 
Shakspeare could have attached the slightest weight ; 
far less could have outraged the sanctities of place and 
subject, by affixing to any sentiment whatever (and, 
according to the fiction of the case, his farewell senti- 
ment) the sanction of a curse. 

Filial veneration and piety towards the memory of 
this great man, have led us into a digression that might 
have been unseasonable in any cause less weighty than 
one, having for its object to deliver his honored name 
from a load of the most brutal malignity. Never 
more, we hope and venture to believe, will any 
thoughtless biographer impute to Shakspeare the asi- 
nine doggerel with which the uncritical blundering of 
his earliest biographer has caused his name to be dis- 
honored. We now resume the thread of our biogra- 
phy. ‘The stream of history is centuries in working 
itself clear of any calumny with which it has once 
been polluted. 

Most readers will be aware of an old story, accord- 
ing to which Shakspeare gained his livelihood for some 
time after coming to London by holding the horses of 
those who rode to the play. This legend is as idle as 
any one of those which we have just exposed. No 
custom ever existed of riding on horseback to the play. 


60 SHAKSPEARE. 


Gentlemen, who rode valuable horses, would assuredly 
not expose them systematically to the injury of stand- 
ing exposed to cold for two or even four hours ; and 
persons of inferior rank would not ride on horseback 
in the town. Besides, had such a custom ever existed, 
stables (or sheds at least) would soon have arisen to 
meet the public wants; and in some of the dramatic 
sketches of the day, which noticed every fashion as it 
arose, this would not have been overlooked. The 
story is traced originally to Sir William Davenant. 
Betterton the actor, who professed to have received it 
from him, passed it onwards to Rowe, he to Pope, 
Pope to Bishop Newton, the editor of Milton, and 
Newton to Dr. Johnson. This pedigree of the fable, 
however, adds nothing to its credit, and multiplies the 
chances of some mistake. Another fable, not much 
less absurd, represents Shakspeare as having from the 
very first been borne upon the establishment of the 
theatre, and so far contradicts the other fable, but 
originally in the very humble character of call-boy or 
deputy prompter, whose business it was to summon 
each performer according to his order of coming upon 
the stage. This story, however, quite as much as the 
other, is irreconcileable with the discovery recently. 
made by Mr. Collier, that in 1589 Shakspeare was a 
shareholder in the important property of a principal 
London theatre. It seems destined that all the un- 
doubted facts of Shakspeare’s life should come to us 
through the channel of legal documents, which are 
better evidence even than imperial medals; whilst, on 
the other hand, all the fabulous anecdotes, not having 
an attorney’s seal to them, seem to have been the 


SHAKSPEARE. 61 


fictions of the wonder maker. The plain presumption 
from the record of Shakspeare’s situation in 1589, 
coupled with the fact that his first arrival in London 
was possibly not until 1587, but according to the earli- 
est account not before 1586, a space of time which 
leaves but little room for any remarkable changes of 
situation, seems to be, that, either in requital of servi- 
ces done to the players by the poet’s family, or in 
consideration of money advanced by his father-in-law, 
or on account of Shakspeare’s personal accomplish- 
ments as an actor, and as an adapter of dramatic 
works to the stage ; for one of these reasons, or for all 
of them united, William Shakspeare, about the 23d 
year of his age, was adopted into the partnership of a 
respectable histrionic company, possessing a first-rate 
theatre in the metropolis. If 1586 were the year in 
which he came up to London, it seems probable 
enough that his immediate motive to that step was the 
increasing distress of his father; for in that year John 
Shakspeare resigned the office of alderman. There is, 
however, a bare possibility that Shakspeare might have 
gone to London about the time when he completed his 
twenty-first year, that Is, in the spring of 1585, but not 
earlier. Nearly two years after the birth of his eldest 
daughter Susanna, his wife lay in for a second and a 
last time; but she then brought her husband twins, a 
son and a daughter. These children were baptized in 
February of the year 1585; so that Shakspeare’s 
whole family of three children were born and baptized 
two months before he completed his majority. The 
twins were baptized by the names of Hamnet and 
Judith, those being the names of two amongst their 


62 SHAKSPEARE. 


sponsors, viz., Mr. Sadler and his wife. Hamnet, 
which is a remarkable name in itself, becomes still 
more so from its resemblance to the immortal name of 
Hamlet !? the Dane; it was, however, the real baptis- 
mal name of Mr. Sadler, a friend of Shakspeare’s, 
about fourteen years older than himself. Shakspeare’s 
son must then have been most interesting to his heart, 
both as a twin child and as his only boy. He died in 
1596, when he was about eleven years old. Both 
daughters survived their father; both married; both 

left issue, and thus gave a chance for continuing the 
succession from the great poet. But all the four 
grandchildren died without offspring. 

Of Shakspeare personally, at least of Shakapaea 
the man, as distinguished from the author, there 
remains little more to record. Already in 1592, 
Greene, in his posthumous Groat’s-worth of Wit, had 
expressed the earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the 
following sentence: ‘* There is an upstart crow, beau- 
tified with our feathers ; in his own conceit the only 
Shakscene in a country!” ‘This alludes to Shak- 
speare’s office of recasting, and even recomposing, 
dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation ; 
and Master Greene, it is probable, had suffered in his 
self-estimation, or in his purse, by the alterations in 
some piece of his own, which the duty of Shakspeare 
to the general interests of the theatre had obliged him 
to make. In 1591 it has been supposed that Shak- 
speare wrote his first drama, the Two Gentlemen of 
Verona ; the least characteristically marked of all his 
plays, and, with the exception of Love’s Labors Lost, 
the least interesting. 


SHAKSPEARE. 63 


From this year, 1591 to that of 1611, are just 
twenty years, within which space lie the whole 
dramatic creations of Shakspeare, averaging nearly 
one for every six months. In 1611 was written the 
Tempest, which is supposed to have been the last of 
all Shakspeare’s works. Even on that account, as Mr. 
Campbell feelingly observes, it has ‘‘a sort of sacred- 
ness;’’ and it is a most remarkable fact, and one 
calculated to make a man superstitious, that in this 
play the great enchanter Prospero, in whom, ‘“ as if 
conscious,” says Mr. Campbell, ‘ that this would be his 
last work, the poet has been inspired to typify himself 
as a wise, potent, and benevolent magician,” of whom, 
indeed, as of Shakspeare himself, it may be said, that 
*‘ within that circle” (the circle of his own art) ‘* none 
durst tread but he,” solemnly and for ever renounces 
his mysterious functions, symbolically breaks his en- 
chanter’s wand, and declares that he will bury his 
books, his science, and his secrets, 


“ Deeper than did ever plummet sound.” 


Nay, it is even ominous, that in this play, and from 
the voice of Prospero, issues that magnificent prophecy 
of the total destruction which should one day swallow 
bd! 

The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea all which it inherit.” 
And this prophecy is followed immediately by a most 
profound ejaculation, gathering into one pathetic ab- 
straction the total philosophy of life : 


We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of; and our little life 
Is rounded by a sleep; ” 


64. SHAKSPEARE. 


that is, in effect, our life is a little tract of feverish 
vigils, surrounded and islanded by a shoreless ocean of 
sleep — sleep before birth, sleep after death. 

These remarkable passages were probably not unde- 
signed; but if we suppose them to have been thrown 
off without conscious notice of their tendencies, then, 
according to the superstition of the ancient Grecians, 
they would have been regarded as prefiguring words, 
prompted by the secret genius that accompanies every 
man, such as insure along with them their own accom- 
plishment. With or without intention, however, it is 
believed that Shakspeare wrote nothing more after this 
exquisite romantic drama. With respect to the re- 
mainder of his personal history, Dr. Drake and others 
have supposed, that during the twenty years from 1591 
to 1611, he visited Stratford often, and latterly once a 
year. 

In 1589 he had possessed some share in a theatre ; 
in 1596 he had a considerable share. Through Lord 
Southampton, as a surviving friend of Lord Essex, who 
was viewed as the martyr to his Scottish politics, there 
can be no doubt that Shakspeare had acquired the 
favor of James I.; and accordingly, on the 29th of 
May, 1603, about two months after the king’s acces- 
sion to the throne of England, a patent was granted 
to the company of players who possessed the Globe 
theatre ; in which patent Shakspeare’s name stands 
second. ‘This patent raised the company to the rank 
of his majesty’s servants, whereas previously they are 
supposed to have been simply the servants of the Lord 
Chamberlain. Perhaps it was in grateful acknowledg- 
ment of this royal favor that Shakspeare afterwards, in 


SHAKSPEARE. 65 


1606, paid that sublime compliment to the house of 
Stuart, which is involved in the vision shown to Mac- 
beth. This vision is managed with exquisite skill. It 
was impossible to display the whole series of princes 
from Macbeth to James I.; but he beholds the posterity 
of Banquo, one ‘ gold-bound brow” succeeding to 
another, until he comes to an eighth apparition of a 
Scottish king, 
“Who hears a glass 

Which shows him many more ; and some he sees 

Who twofold balls and treble sceptres carry ;” 
thus bringing down without tedium the long succession 
to the very person of James I., by the symbolic i ree? 
of the two crowns united on one head. 

About the beginning of the century Shakspeare had 
become rich enough to purchase the best house in 
Stratford, called The Great House, which name he 
altered to New Place; and in 1602 he bought one 
hundred and seven acres adjacent to this house for a 
sum (£320) corresponding to about 1500 guineas of 
modern money. Malone thinks that he purchased the 
house as early as 1597; and it is certain that about 
that time he was able to assist his father in obtaining a 
renewed grant of arms from the Herald’s College, and 
therefore, of course, to re-establish his father’s fortunes. 
Ten years of well-directed industry, viz., from 1591 to 
1601, and the prosperity of the theatre in which he 
was a proprietor, had raised him to affluence; and 
after another ten years, improved with the same 
suceess, he was able to retire with an income of £300, 
or (according to the customary computations) in mod- 
ern money of £1500, per annum. Shakspeare was in 

5 


66 SHAKSPEARE. 


fact the first man of letters, Pope the second, and Sir 
Walter Scott the third, who, in Great Britain, has ever 
realized a large fortune by literature; or in Christen- 
dom, if we except Voltaire, and two dubious cases in 
Italy. The four or five latter years of his life Shak- 
speare passed in dignified ease, in profound meditation, 
we may be sure, and in universal respect, at his native 
town of Stratford; and there he died, on the 23d of 
April, 1616.'® 

His daughter Susanna had been married on the 5th 
of June of the year 1607, to Dr. John Hall,!9 a physi- 
cian in Stratford. The doctor died in November, 
1635, aged sixty ; his wife, at the age of sixty-six, on 
July 11, 1640. They had one child, a daughter, 
named Elizabeth, born in 1608, married April 22, 
1626, to Thomas Nashe, Esq., left a widow in 1647, 
and subsequently remarried to Sir John Barnard ; but 
this Lady Barnard, the sole grand-daughter of the 
poet, had no children by either marriage. The other 
daughter, Judith, on February 10, 1616, (about ten 
weeks before her father’s death,) married Mr. Thomas 
Quiney of Stratford, by whom she had three sons, 
Shakspeare, Richard, and Thomas. Judith was about 
thirty-one years old at the time of her marriage; and 
living just forty-six years afterwards, she died in 
February, 1662, at the age of seventy-seven. Her 
three sons died without issue; and thus, in the direct 
lineal descent, it is certain that no representative has 
survived of this transcendent poet, the most august 
amongst created intellects. , 

After this review of Shakspeare’s ral it becomes 
our duty to take a summary survey of his works, of 


SHAKSPEARE. 67 


his intellectual powers, and of his station in literature, 
a station which is now irrevocably settled, not so much 
(which happens in other cases) by a vast overbalance 
of favorable suffrages, as by acclamation ; not so much 
by the voices of those who admire him up to the verge 
of idolatry, as by the acts of those who everywhere 
seek for his works among the primal necessities of 
life, demand them, and crave them as they do their 
daily bread; not so much by eulogy openly proclaim- 
ing itself, as by the silent homage recorded in the 
endless multiplication of what he has bequeathed us ; 
not so much by his own compatriots, who, with regard 
to almost every other author,?° compose the total 
amount of his effective audience, as by the unanimous 
“all hail!’ of intellectual Christendom ; finally, not 
by the hasty partisanship of his own generation, nor by 
the biassed judgment of an age trained in the same 
modes of feeling and of thinking with himself,— but by 
the solemn award of generation succeeding to genera- 
tion, of one age correcting the obliquities or peculiari- 
ties of another; by the verdict of two hundred and 
thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very 
latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty- 
seven years if we date from the earliest; a verdict 
which has been continually revived and re-opened, 
probed, searched, vexed, by criticism in every spirit, 
from the most genial and intelligent, down to the most 
malignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads 
and great ignorance could suggest when cooperating 
with impure hearts and narrow sensibilities ; a verdict, 
in short, sustained and countersigned by a longer series 
of writers, many of them eminent for wit or learning, 


68 SHAKSPEARE. 


than were ever before congregated upon any inquest 
relating to any author, be he who he might, ancient 2} 
or modern, Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty 
saying with respect toa piratical and knavish publisher, 
who made a trade of insulting the memories of de- 
ceased authors by forged writings, that he was ‘‘ among 
the new terrors of death.” But in the gravest sense it 
may be affirmed of Shakspeare, that he is among the 
modern luxuries of life; that life, in fact, is a new 
thing, and one more to be coveted, since Shakspeare 
has extended the domains of human consciousness, 
and pushed its dark frontiers into regions not so much . 
as dimly descried or even suspected before his time, 
far less illuminated (as now they are) by beauty and 
tropical Juxuriance of life. For instance, —a single 
instance, indeed one which in itself is a world of new 
revelation, — the possible beauty of the female char- 
acter had not been seen as in a dream before Shak- 
speare called into perfect life the radiant shapes of 
Desdemona, of Imogene, of Hermione, of Perdita, of 
Ophelia, of Miranda, and many others. The Una of 
Spenser, earlier by ten or fifteen years than most of 
these, was an idealized portrait of female innocence 
and virgin purity, but too shadowy and unreal for a 
dramatic reality. And as to the Grecian classics, let 
not the reader imagine for an instant that any prototype 
in this field of Shakspearian power can be looked for 
there. The Antigone and the Electra of the tragic 
poets are the two leading female characters that classi- 
cal antiquity offers to our respect, but assuredly not to 
our impassioned love, as disciplined and exalted in the 
school of Shakspeare. They challenge our admiration, 


SHAKSPEARE. 69 


severe, and even stern, as impersonations of filial duty, 
cleaving to the steps of a desolate and afflicted old 
man; or of sisterly affection, maintaining the rights of 
a brother under circumstances of peril, of desertion, 
and consequently of perfect self-reliance. Iphigenia, 
again, though not dramatically coming before us in her 
own person, but according to the beautiful report of a 
spectator, presents us with a fine statuesque model of 
heroic fortitude, and of one whose young heart, even 
in the very agonies of her cruel immolation, refused to 
forget, by a single indecorous gesture, or so much asa 
moment’s neglect of her own princely descent, and 
that she herself was ‘a lady in the land.” These are 
fine marble groups, but they are not the warm breath- 
ing realities of Shakspeare ; there is ‘* no speculation ” 
in their cold marble eyes; the breath of life is not in 
their nostrils; the fine pulses of womanly sensibilities 
are not throbbing in their bosoms. And besides this 
immeasurable difference between the cold moony re- 
flexes of life, as exhibited by the power of Grecian 
art, and the true sunny life of Shakspeare, it must be 
observed that the Antigones, &c. of the antique put 
forward but one single trait of character, like the aloe 
with its single blossom. ‘This solitary feature is pre- 
sented to us as an abstraction, and as an insulated 
quality ; whereas in Shakspeare all is presented in the 
concrete ; that is to say, not brought forward in relief, 
as by some effort of an anatomical artist; but em- 
bodied and imbedded, so to speak, as by the force of a 
creative nature, in the complex system of a human 
life; a life in which all the elements move and play 
simultaneously, and with something more than mere 


70 SHAKSPEARE, 


simultaneity or co-existence, acting and re-acting each 
upon the other, nay, even acting by each other and 
through each other. In Shakspeare’s characters is felt 
for ever a real organic life, where each is for the 
whole and in the whole, and where the whole is for 
each and in each. They only are real incarnations. 
The Greek poets could not exhibit any approxima- 
tions to female character, without violating the truth of 
Grecian life, and shocking the feelings of the audience. 
The drama with the Greeks, as with us, though much 
less than with us, was a picture of human life; and 
that which could not occur in life could not wisely be 
exhibited on the stage. Now, in ancient Greece, 
women were secluded from the society of men. ‘The 
conventual sequestration of the yvverxwrirs, or female 
apartment”? of the house, and the Mahommedan con- 
secration of its threshold against the ingress of males, 
had been transplanted from Asia into Greece thousands 
of years perhaps before either convents or Mahommed 
existed. Thus barred from all open social intercourse, 
women could not develop or express any character by 
word or action. Even to have a character, violated, to 
a Grecian mind, the ideal portrait of feminine excel- 
lence; whence, perhaps, partly the too generic, too 
little individualized, style of Grecian beauty. But 
prominently to express a character was impossible 
under the common tenor of Grecian life, unless when 
high tragical catastrophes transcended the decorums of 
that tenor, or for a brief interval raised the curtain 
which veiled it. Hence the subordinate part which 
women play upon the Greek stage in all but some half 
dozen cases. In the paramount tragedy on that stage, 


SHAKSPEARE. 71 


the model tragedy, the Gédipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, 
there is virtually no woman at all; for Jocasta is a 
party to the story merely as the dead Laius or the self- 
murdered Sphinx was a party, viz., by her contribu- 
tions to the fatalities of the event, not by anything she 
does or says spontaneously. In fact, the Greek poet, 
if a wise poet, could not address himself genially to a 
task in which he must begin by shocking the sensibili- 
ties of his countrymen. And hence followed, not only 
the dearth of female characters in the Grecian drama, 
but also a second result still more favorable to the sense 
of a new power evolved by Shakspeare. Whenever 
the common law of Grecian life did give way, it was, 
as we have observed, to the suspending force of some 
great convulsion or tragical catastrophe. This for a 
moment (like an earthquake in a nunnery) would set 
at liberty even the timid, fluttering Grecian women, 
those doves of the dove-cot, and would call some of 
them into action. But which? Precisely those of 
energetic and masculine minds; the timid and femi- 
nine would but shrink the more from public gaze and 
from tumult. Thus it happened, that such female 
characters as were exhibited in Greece, could not but 
be the harsh and the severe. If a gentle Ismene 
appeared for a moment in contest with some energetic 
sister Antigone, (and chiefly, perhaps, by way of draw- 
ing out the fiercer character of that sister,) she was 
soon dismissed as unfit for scenical effect. So that not 
only were female characters few, but, moreover, of 
these few the majority were but repetitions of mas- 
culine qualities in female persons. Female agency 
being seldom summoned on the stage, except when it 


72 SHAKSPEARE. 


had received a sort of special dispensation from its 
sexual character, by some terrific convulsions of the 
house or the city, naturally it assumed the style of 
action suited to these circumstances. And hence it 
arose, that not woman as she differed from man, but 
woman as she resembled man — woman, in short, seen 
under circumstances so dreadful as to abolish the effect 
of sexual distinction, was the woman of the Greek 
tragedy.?3 And hence generally arose for Shakspeare 
the wider field, and the more astonishing by its perfect 
novelty, when he first introduced female characters, 
not as mere varieties or echoes of masculine charac- 
ters, a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, 
the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female charac- 
ters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature ; 
woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but 
woman ‘after her kind”? —the other hemisphere of 
the dramatic world ; woman, running through the vast 
gamut of womanly loveliness ; woman, as emancipated, 
exalted, ennobled, under a new law of Christian 
morality ; woman, the sister and coequal of man, no 
longer his slave, his prisoner, and sometimes his rebel. 
“It is a far cry to Loch Awe;” and from the Athe- 
nian stage to the stage of Shakspeare, it may be said, 
is a prodigious interval. True; but prodigious as it 
is, there is really nothing between them. The Roman 
stage, at least the tragic stage, as is well known, was 
put out, as by an extinguisher, by the cruel amphithea- 
tre, just as a candle is made pale and ridiculous by 
daylight. ‘Those who were fresh from the real mur- 
ders of the bloody amphitheatre regarded with con- 
tempt the mimic murders of the stage. Stimulation 


SHAKSPEARE. 78 


too coarse and too intense had its usual effect in 
making the sensibilities callous. Christian emperors 
arose at length, who abolished the amphitheatre in its 
bloodier features. But by that time the genius of the 
tragic muse had long slept the sleep of death. And 
that muse had no resurrection until the age of Shak- 
speare. So that, notwithstanding a gulf of nineteen 
centuries and upwards separates Shakspeare from 
Euripides, the last of the surviving Greek tragedians, 
the one is still the nearest successor of the other, just 
as Connaught and the islands in Clew Bay are next 
neighbors to America, although three thousand watery 
columns, each of a cubic mile in dimensions, divide 
them from each other. 

A second reason, which lends an emphasis of novelty 
and effective power to Shakspeare’s female world, is a 
peculiar fact of contrast which exists between that and 
his corresponding world of men. Letus explain. The 
purpose and the intention of the Grecian stage was not 
primarily to develope human character, whether in 
men or in women: human fates were its object; great 
tragic situations under the mighty control of a vast 
cloudy destiny, dimly descried at intervals, and brood- 
ing over human life by mysterious agencies, and for 
mysterious ends. Man, no longer the representative of 
an august will, man the passion-puppet of fate, could 
not with any effect display what we call a character, 
which is a distinction between man and man, ema- 
nating originally from the will, and expressing its 
determinations, moving under the large variety of 
human impulses. The will is the central pivot of 
character; and this was obliterated, thwarted, can- 


74 SHAKSPEARE. 


celled, by the dark fatalism which brooded over the 
Grecian stage. That explanation will sufficiently clear 
up the reason why marked or complex variety of char- 
acter was slighted by the great principles of the Greek 
tragedy. And every scholar who has studied that 
grand drama of Greece with feeling,— that drama, 
so magnificent, so regal, so stately,—and who has 
thoughtfully investigated its principles, and its differ- 
ence from the English drama, will acknowledge that 
powerful and elaborate character, character, for in- 
stance, that could employ the fiftieth part of that 
profound analysis which has been applied to Hamlet, 
to Falstaff, to Lear, to Othello, and applied by Mrs. 
Jamieson so admirably to the full development of the 
Shakspearian heroines, would have been as much 
wasted, nay, would have been defeated, and interrupt- 
ed the blind agencies of fate, just in the same way 
as it would injure the shadowy grandeur of a ghost 
to individualize it too much. Milton’s angels are 
slightly touched, superficially touched, with differences 
of character; but they are such differences, so simple 
and general, as are just sufficient to rescue them from 
the reproach applied to Virgil’s “ fortemque Gyan, 
fortemque Cloanthem;” just sufficient to make them 
knowable apart. Pliny speaks of painters who painted 
in one or two colors; and, as respects the angelic 
characters, Milton does so; he is monochromatic. So, 
and for reasons resting upon the same ultimate philoso- 
phy, were the mighty architects of the Greek tragedy. 
They also were monochromatic; they also, as to the 
characters of their persons, painted in one color. And 
so far there might have been the same novelty in Shak- 


SHAKSPEARE. 75 


speare’s men as in his women. There might have 
been ; but the reason why there is not, must be sought 
in the fact, that History, the muse of History, had 
there even been no such muse as Melpomene, would 
have forced us into an acquaintance with human 
character. History, as the representative of actual 
life, of real man, gives us powerful delineations of 
character in its chief agents, that is, in men; and 
therefore it is that Shakspeare, the absolute creator of 
female character, was but the mightiest of all painters 
with regard to male character. Take a single instance. 
The Antony of Shakspeare, immortal for its execution, 
is found, after all, as regards the primary conception, 
in history. Shakspeare’s delineation is but the expan- 
sion of the germ already preéxisting, by way of 
scattered fragments, in Cicero’s Philippics, in Cicero’s 
Letters, in Appian, &c. But Cleopatra, equally fine, 
is a pure creation of art. The situation and the scenic 
circumstances belong to history, but the character 
belongs to Shakspeare. 

In the great world, therefore, of woman, as the 
interpreter of the shifting phases and the lunar varie- 
ties of that mighty changeable planet, that lovely 
satellite of man, Shakspeare stands not the first only, 
not the original only, but is yet the sole authentic 
oracle of truth. Woman, therefore, the beauty of the 
female mind, this is one great field of his power. The 
supernatural world, the world of apparitions, that is 
another. For reasons which it would be easy to give, 
reasons emanating from the gross mythology of the 
ancients, no Grecian,” no Roman, could have con- 
ceived a ghost. That shadowy conception, the pro- 


76 SHAKSPEARE. 


testing apparition, the awful projection of the human 
conscience, belongs to the Christian mind. And in all 
Christendom, who, let us ask, who, who but Shakspeare 
has found the power for effectually working this mys- 
terious mode of being? In summoning back to earth 
“the majesty of buried Denmark,” how like an awful 
necromancer does Shakspeare appear! All the pomps 
and grandeurs which religion, which the grave, which 
the popular superstition had gathered about the subject 
of apparitions, are here converted to his purpose, and 
bend to one awful effect. The wormy grave brought 
into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn ; 
the trumpet of resurrection suggested, and again as an 
antagonist idea to the crowing of the cock, (a bird 
ennobled in the Christian mythus by the part he is 
made to play at the Crucifixion ;) its starting “asa 
guilty thing” placed in opposition to its majestic ex- 
pression of offended dignity when struck at by the 
partisans of the sentinels; its awful allusions to the 
secrets of its prison-house; its ubiquity, contrasted 
with its local presence; its aerial substance, yet 
clothed in palpable armor ; the heart-shaking solemnity 
of its language, and the appropriate scenery of its® 
haunt, viz., the ramparts of a capital fortress, with no 
witnesses but a few gentlemen mounting guard at the 
dead of night, — what a mist, what a mirage of vapor, 
is here accumulated, through which the dreadful being 
in the centre looms upon us in far larger proportions, 
than could have happened had it been insulated and 
left naked of this circumstantial pomp! In the Tem- 
pest, again, what new modes of life, preternatural, yet 
far as the poles from the spiritualities of religion! 


SHAKSPEARE. "7 


Ariel in antithesis to Caliban! What is most ethereal 
to what is most animal! A phantom of air, an 
abstraction of the dawn and of vesper sun-lights, a 
bodiless sylph on the one hand; on the other a gross 
carnal monster, like the Miltonic Asmodai, ‘ the flesh- 
liest incubus”? among the fiends, and yet so far enno- 
bled into interest by his intellectual power, and by the 
grandeur of misanthropy!*° In the Midsummer- 
Night’s Dream, again, we have the old traditional 
fairy, a lovely mode of preternatural life, remodified 
by Shakspeare’s eternal talisman. Oberon and Titania 
remind us at first glance of Ariel. They approach, 
but how far they recede. They are like — “ like, but, 
oh, how different!’? And in no other exhibition of 
this dreamy population of the moonlight forests and 
forest-lawns, are the circumstantial proprieties of fairy 
life so exquisitely imagined, sustained, or expressed. 
The dialogue between Oberon and Titania is, of itself, 
and taken separately from its connection, one of the 
most delightful poetic scenes that literature affords. 
The witches in Macbeth are another variety of super- 
natural life, in which Shakspeare’s power to enchant 
and to disenchant are alike portentous. ‘The circum- 
stances of the blasted heath, the army at a distance, 
the withered attire of the mysterious hags, and the 
choral litanies of their fiendish Sabbath, are as finely 
imagined in ‘their kind as those which herald and 
which surround the ghost in Hamlet. There we see 
the positive of Shakspeare’s superior power. But 
now turn and look to the negative. At a time when 
the trials of witches, the royal book on demonology, 
and popular superstition (all so far useful, as they pre- 


78 SHAKSPEARE. 


pared a basis of undoubting faith for the poet’s serious 
use of such agencies) had degraded and polluted the 
ideas of these mysterious beings by many mean asso- 
ciations, Shakspeare does not fear to employ them in 
high tragedy, (a tragedy moreover which, though not 
the very greatest of his efforts as an intellectual whole, 
nor as a struggle of passion, is among the greatest in 
any view, and positively the greatest for scenical gran- 
deur, and in that respect makes the nearest approach 
of all English tragedies to the Grecian model ;) he 
does not fear to introduce, for the same appalling effect 
as that for which Adschylus introduced the Eumenides, 
a triad of old women, concerning whom an English 
wit has remarked this grotesque peculiarity in the 
popular creed of that day, — that although potent over 
winds and storms, in league with powers of darkness, 
they yet stood in awe of the constable, — yet relying 
on his own supreme power to disenchant as well as to 
enchant, to create and to uncreate, he mixes these 
women and their dark machineries with the power of 
armies, with the agencies of kings, and the fortunes of 
martial kingdoms. Such was the sovereignty of this 
poet, so mighty its compass ! 

A third fund of Shakspeare’s peculiar power lies in 
his teeming fertility of fine thoughts and sentiments. 
From his works alone might be gathered a golden 
bead-roll of thoughts the deepest, subtilest, most 
pathetic, and yet most catholic and universally intelli- 
gible ; the most characteristic, also, and appropriate to 
the particular person, the situation, and the case, yet, 
at the same time, applicable to the circumstances of 
every human being, under all the accidents of life, and 


SHAKSPEARE. 79 


all vicissitudes of fortune. But this subject offers so 
vast a field of observation, it being so eminently the 
prerogative of Shakspeare to have thought more finely 
and more extensively than all other poets combined, 
that we cannot wrong the dignity of such a theme by 
doing more, in our narrow limits, than simply noticing 
it as one of the emblazonries upon Shakspeare’s 
shield. 

Fourthly, we shall indicate (and, as in the last case, 
barely indicate, without attempting in so vast a field to 
offer any inadequate illustrations) one mode of Shak- 
speare’s dramatic excellence, which hitherto has not 
attracted any special or separate notice. We allude to 
the forms of life, and natural human passion, as appar- 
ent in the structure of his dialogue. Among the many 
defects and infirmities of the French and of the Italian 
drama, indeed, we may say of the Greek, the dialogue 
proceeds always by independent speeches, replying 
indeed to each other, but never modified in its several 
openings by the momentary effect of its several termi- 
nal forms immediately preceding. Now, in Shak- 
speare, who first set an example of that most important 
innovation, in all his impassioned dialogues, each reply 
or rejoinder seems the mere rebound of the previous 
speech. Every form of natural interruption, breaking 
through the restraints of ceremony under the impulses 
of tempestuous passion; every form of hasty interro- 
gative, ardent reiteration when a question has been 
evaded; every form of scornful repetition of the 
hostile words; every impatient continuation of the 
hostile statement; in short, all modes and formule by 
which anger, hurry, fretfulness, scorn, impatience, or 


80 SHAKSPEARE. 


excitement under any movement whatever, can disturb 
or modify or dislocate the formal bookish style of 
commencement, — these are as rife in Shakspeare’s 
dialogue as in life itself; and how much vivacity, how 
profound a verisimilitude, they add to the scenic effect 
as an imitation of human passion and real life, we need 
not say. A volume might be written illustrating the 
vast varieties of Shakspeare’s art and power in this one 
field of improvement ; another volume might be dedi- 
cated to the exposure of the lifeless and unnatural 
result from the opposite practice in the foreign stages 
of France and Italy. And we may truly say, that 
were Shakspeare distinguished from them by- this 
single feature of nature and propriety, he would on 
that account alone have merited a great immortality. 


The dramatic works of Shakspeare generally ac- 
knowledged to be genuine consist of thirty-five pieces. 
The following is the chronological order in which they 
are supposed to have been written, according to Mr. 
Malone, as given in his second edition of Shakspeare, 
and by Mr. George Chalmers in his Supplemental 
Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare Papers : 


Chalmers. Malone. 


1. The Comedy of Errors, 1591 1592 
2. Love’s Labors Lost, 1592 1594 
3. Romeo and Juliet, 1592 1596 
4. Henry VI., the First Part, 1593 1589 
5. Henry VI., the Second Part, 1595 1591 
6. Henry VI., the Third Part, 1595 1591 
7. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1595 1591 
8. Richard I1., 1596 1593 
9. Richard I1., 1596 1593 


10. 
11. 
12. 
13. 
14. 
15. 
16. 
17. 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 
23. 
24, 
25. 
26. 
27. 
28. 
29. 
30. 
31. 
32. 
33. 
34. 
35. 


SHAKSPEARE. 
Chalmers. 
The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1596 
Henry IV., the First Part, 1597 
Henry IV., the Second Part, 1597 
Henry V., 1597 
The Merchant of Venice, 1597 
Hamlet, ~ 1598 
King John, 1598 
A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, 1598 
The Taming of the Shrew, 1599 
All’s Well that Ends Well, 1599 
Much Ado about Nothing, 1599 
As you Like It, 1602 
Troilus and Cressida, 1610 
Timon of Athens, 1611 
The Winter’s Tale, 1601 
Measure for Measure, 1604 
King Lear, 1605 
Cymbeline, 1606 
Macbeth, 1606 
Julius Cesar, 1607 
Antony and Cleopatra, 1608 
Coriolanus, 1619 
The Tempest, 1613 
The Twelfth Night, 1613 
Henry VIIL., 1613 
Othello, 1614 


81 


Malone. 
1601 
1597 
1599 
1599 
1594 
1600 
1596 
1594 
1596 
1606 
1600 
1599 
1602 
1610 
1611 
1603 
1605 
1609 
1606 
1607 
1608 
1610 
1611 
1607 
1603 
1604 


Pericles and Titus Andronicus, although inserted in 
all the late editions of Shakspeare’s Plays, are omitted 
in the above list, both by Malone and Chalmers, as not 
being Shakspeare’s. 

The first edition of the Works was published in 
1623, in a folio volume, entitled Mr. William Shak- 


speare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. 


6 


The 


82 SHAKSPEARE,. 


second edition was published in 1632, the third in 
1664, and the fourth in 1685, all in folio; but the 
edition of 1623 is considered the most authentic. 
Rowe published an edition in seven vols. 8vo, in 1709. 
Editions were published by Pope, in six vols. 4to, in 
1725; by Warburton, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1747; by 
Dr. Johnson, in eight vols. 8vo, in 1765; by Stevens, 
in four vols. 8vo, in 1766; by Malone, in ten vols. 8vo, 
in 1789 ; by Alexander Chalmers, in nine vols. 8vo, in 
1811; by Johnson and Stevens, revised by Isaac Reed, 
in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 1813; and the Plays and 
Poems, with notes by Malone, were edited by James 
Boswell, and published in twenty-one vols. 8vo, in 
1821. Besides these, numerous editions have been 
published from time to time. 


NOTES. 


Nore 1. Pagel. 


Mr. CampseE t, the latest editor of Shakspeare’s dramatic works, 
observes that “the poet’s name has been variously written Shax- 
peare, Shackspeare, Shakspeare, and Shakspere;” to which varie- 
ties might be added Shagspere, from the Worcester Marriage 
License, published in 1836. But the fact is, that by combining 
with all the differences in spelling the first syllable, all those in 
spelling the second, more than twenty-five distinct varieties of the 
name may be expanded, (like an algebraic series,) for the choice of 
the curious in mis-spelling. Above all things, those varieties which 
arise from the intercalation of the middle e, (that is, the e immedi- 
ately before the final syllable spear,) can never be overlooked by 
those who remember, at the opening of the Dunciad, the note upon 
this very question about the orthography of Shakspeare’s name, as 
also upon the other great question about the title of the immortal 
Satire, Whether it ought not to have been the Dunceiade, seeing that 
Dunce, its great author and progenitor, cannot possibly dispense 
with the letter e. Meantime we must remark, that the first three of 
Mr. Campbell’s variations are mere caprices of the press; as is 
Shagspere ; or, more probably, this last euphonious variety arose out 
of the gross clownish pronunciation of the two hiccuping ‘ marks- 
men*? who rode over to Worcester for the license; and one cannot | 
forbear laughing at the bishop’s secretary for having been so misled 
by two varlets, professedly incapable of signing their own names. 
The same drunken villains had cut down the bride’s name Hatha- 
way into Hathwey. Finally, to treat the matter with seriousness, 


84 SHAKSPEARE, 


Sir Frederick Madden has shown, in his recent letter to the Society 
of Antiquaries, that the poet himself in all probability wrote the 
name uniformly Shakspere. Orthography, both of proper names, of 
appellatives, and of words universally, was very unsettled up to a 
period long subsequent to that of Shakspeare. Still it must usually 
have happened that names wrilten variously and laxly by others, 
would be written uniformly by the owners; especially by those 
owners who had occasion to sign their names frequently, and by 
literary people, whose attention was often, as well as consciously, 
directed to the proprieties of spelling. Shakspeare is now too 
familiar to the eye for any alteration to be attempted; but it is 
pretty certain that Sir Frederick Madden is right in stating the 
poet’s own signature to have been uniformly Shakspere. It is so 
written twice in the course of his will, and it is so written on a 
blank leaf of Florio’s English translation of Montaigne’s Essays ; 
a book recently discovered, and sold, on account of its autograph, 
for a hundred guineas. 


Notre 2. Page 3. 


But, as a proof that, even in the case of royal christenings, it 
was not thought pious to “tempt God,” as it were, by delay, Edward 
VI., the only son of Henry VIII., was born on the 12th day of 
October in the year 1537. And there was a delay on account of the 
sponsors, since the birth was not in London. Yet how little that 
delay was made, may be seen by this fact: The birth took place in 
the dead of the night, the day was Friday; and yet, in spite of all 
delay, the christening was most pompously celebrated on the suc- 
ceeding Monday. And Prince Arthur, the elder brother of Henry 
VIII., was christened on the very next Sunday succeeding to his 
birth, notwithstanding an inevitable delay, occasioned by the dis- 
tance of Lord Oxford, his godfather, and the excessive rains, which 
prevented the earl being reached by couriers, or himself reaching 
Winchester, without extraordinary exertions. 


Norte 3. Page 10. 


A great modern poet refers to this very case of. music entering 
“the mouldy chambers of the dull idiot’s brain ;” but in support of 
what seems to us a baseless hypothesis. 


Note 4. Page 10. 


Probably Addison’s fear of the national feeling was a good deal 
strengthened by his awe of Milton and of Dryden, both of whom 


NOTES. 85 


had expressed a homage towards Shakspeare which language cannot 
transcend. Amongst his political friends also were many intense 
admirers of Shakspeare. 


Norte 5. Page 12. 


He who is weak enough to kick and spurn his own native litera- 
ture, even if it were done with more knowledge than is shown by 
Lord Shaftesbury, will usually be kicked and spurned in his turn ; 
and accordingly it has been often remarked, that the Characteristics 
are unjustly neglected in our days. For Lord Shaftesbury, with all 
his pedantry, was a man of great talents. Leibnitz had the sagaci- 
ty to see this through the mists of a translation. ; 


Nore 6. Page 14. 


Perhaps the most bitter political enemy of Charles I. will have 
the candor to allow that, for a prince of those times, he was truly 
and eminently accomplished. His knowledge of the arts was con- 
siderable ; and, as a patron of art, he stands foremost amongst all 
British sovereigns to this hour. He said truly of himself, and 
wisely as to the principle, that he understood English law as well 
as a gentleman ought to understand it; meaning that an attorney’s 
minute knowledge of forms and technical niceties was illiberal. 
Speaking of him as an author, we must remember that the Eikon 
Basiliké is still unappropriated ; that question is still open. But 
supposing the king’s claim negatived, still, in his controversy with 
Henderson, in his negotiations at the Isle of Wight and elsewhere, 
he discovered a power of argument, a learning, and a strength of 
memory, which are truly admirable ; whilst the whole of his'accom- 
plishments are recommended by a modesty and a humility as rare as 
they are unaffected. 


Nore 7. Page 18. 


The necessity of compression obliges us to omit many argu- 
ments and references by which we could demonstrate the fact, that 
Shakspeare’s reputation was always in a progressive state ; allowing 
only for the interruption of about seventeen years, which this poet, 
in common with all others, sustained, not so much from the state of 
war, (which did not fully occupy four of those years,) as from the 
triumph of a gloomy fanaticism. Deduct the twenty-three years of 
the seventeenth century, which had elapsed before the first folio 
appeared, to this space add seventeen years of fanatical madness, 
during fourteen of which all dramatic entertainments were sup- 


86 SHAKSPEARE. 

pressed, the remainder is sixty years. And surely the sale of four 
editions of a vast folio in that space of time was an expression of 
an abiding interest. No other poet, except Spenser, continued to sell 
throughout the century. Besides, in arguing the case of a dramatic 
poet, we must bear in mind, that although readers of learned books 
might be diffused over the face of the land, the readers of poetry 
would be chiefly concentred in the metropolis; and such persons 
would have no need to buy what they heard at the theatres. But 
then comes the question, whether Shakspeare kept possession of the 
theatres. And we are really humiliated by the gross want of sense 
which has been shown, by Malone chiefly, but also by many others, 
in discussing this question. From the Restoration to 1682, says 
Malone, no more than four plays of Shakspeare’s were performed by 
a principal company in London. ‘“ Such was the lamentable taste 
of those times, that the plays of Fletcher, Jonson, and Shirley, were 
much oftener exhibited than those of our author.” What cant is 
this! If that taste were ‘lamentable,’ what are we to think 
of our own times, when plays a thousand times below those of 
Fletcher, or even of Shirley, continually displace Shakspeare ? 
Shakspeare would himself have exulted in finding that he gave way 
only to dramatists so excellent. And, as we have before observed, 
both then and now, it is the very familiarity with Shakspeare, which 
often banishes him from audiences honestly in quest of relaxation 
and amusement. Novelty is the very soul of such relaxation ; but 
in our closets, when we are not unbending, when our minds are ina 
state of tension from intellectual cravings, then it is that we resort 
to Shakspeare ; and oftentimes those who honor him most, like our- 
selves, are the most impatient of seeing his divine scenes disfigured 
by unequal representation, (good, perhaps, in a single personation, 
bad in all the rest ;) or to hear his divine thoughts mangled in the 
recitation; or, (which is worst of all,) to hear them dishonored and 
defeated by imperfect apprehension in the audience, or by defective 
sympathy. Meantime, if one theatre played only four of Shak- 
speare’s dramas, another played at least seven. But the grossest 
folly of Malone is, in fancying the numerous alterations so many 
insults to Shakspeare, whereas they expressed as much homage to 
his memory as if the unaltered dramas had been retained. The 
substance was retained. The changes were merely concessions to 
the changing views of scenical propriety ; sometimes, no doubt, 
made with a simple view to the revolution effected by Davenant at 
the Restoration, in bringing scenes (in the painter’s sense) upon the 
stage ; sometimes also with a view to the altered fashions of the 


NOTES. 87 


audience during the suspensions of the action, or perhaps to the 
introduction of after-pieces, by which, of course, the time was 
abridged for the main performance. A wolume might be written 
upon this subject. Meantime let us never be told, that a poet was 
losing, or had lost his ground, who found in his lowest depression, 
amongst his almost idolatrous supporters, a great king distracted by 
civil wars, a mighty republican poet distracted by puritanical fanati- 
cism, the greatest successor by far of that great poet, a papist and a 
bigoted royalist, and finally, the leading actor of the century, who 
gave and reflected the ruling impulses of his age. 


Nore 8. Page 19. 


One of the profoundest tests by which we can measure the con- 
geniality of an author with the national genius and temper, is the 
degree in which his thoughts or his phrases interweave themselves 
with our daily conversation, and pass into the currency of the 
language. Sew French authors, if any, have imparted one phrase 
to the colloquial idiom ; with respect to Shakspeare, a large diction- 
ary might be made of such phrases as “ win golden opinions,” ‘ in 
my mind’s eye,” “ patience on a monument,” “ o’erstep the modesty 
of nature,” ‘more honor’d in the breach than in the observance,” 
“palmy state,” “my poverty and not my will consents,% and so 
forth, without end. This reinforcement of the general language, by 
aids from the mintage of Shakspeare, had already commenced in the 
seventeenth century. 


Note 9. Page 21. 


In fact, by way of representing to himself the system or scheme 
of the English roads, the reader has only to imagine one great letter 
X, or a St. Andrew’s cross, laid down from north to south, and 
decussating at Birmingham. Even Coventry, which makes a slight 
variation for one or two roads, and so far disturbs this decussation, 
by shifting it eastwards, is still in Warwickshire. 


Note 10. Page 27. 


And probably so called by some remote ancestor who had emi- 
grated from the forest of Ardennes, in the Netherlands, and now for 
ever memorable to English ears from its proximity to Waterloo. 


Note ll. Page 29. 


Let not the reader impute to us the gross anachronism of making 
an estimate for Shakspeare’s days in a coin which did not exist 


88 SHAKSPEARE. 


until a century, within a couple of years, after Shakspeare’s birth, 
and did not settle to the value of twenty-one shillings until a century 
after his death. The nerve of such an anachronism would lie in 
putting the estimate into a mouth of that age. And this is precisely 
the blunder into which the foolish forger of Vortigern, &c., has 
fallen. He does not indeed directly mention guineas ; but indirectly 
and virtually he does, by repeatedly giving us accounts imputed to 
Shakspearian contemporaries, in which the sum total amounts to 
£5 5s.; or to £26 5s.; or, again, to £17 17s. 6d. A man is careful 
to subscribe £14 14s. and so forth. But how could such amounts 
have arisen unless under a secret reference to guineas, which were 
not in existence until Charles II.’s reign ; and, moreover, to guineas 
at their final settlement by law into twenty-one shillings each, which 
did not take place until George I.’s reign. 


Note 12. Page 29. 


Thomas Campbell, the poet, in his eloquent Remarks on the Life 
and Writings of William Shakspeare, prefixed to a popular edition 
of the poet’s dramatic works. London, 1838. 


Note 13. Page 30. 


After all the assistance given to such equations between different 
times or different places by Sir George Shuckborough’s tables, and 
other similar investigations, it is still a very difficult problem, com- 
plex, and, after all, merely tentative in the results, to assign the true 
value in such cases ; not only for the obvious reason, that the powers 
of money have varied in different directions with regard to different 
objects, and in different degrees where the direction has on the whole 
continued the same, but because the very objects to be taken into 
computation are so indeterminate, and vary so much, not only as 
regards century and century, kingdom and kingdom, but also, even 
in the same century and the same kingdom, as regards rank and 
rank. That which is a mere necessary to one, is a luxurious super- 
fluity to another. And, in order to ascertain these differences, it is 
an indispensable qualification to have studied the habits and customs 
of the several classes concerned, together with the variations of 
those habits and customs. 


Nore 14. Page 39. 


Never was the esse quam videri in any point more strongly dis- 
criminated than in this very point of gallantry to the female sex, as 
between England and France. In France, the verbal homage to 


r 


NOTES. &9 


woman is so excessive as to betray its real purpose, viz., that it is a 
mask for secret contempt. In England, little is said; but, in the 
mean time, we allow our sovereign ruler to be a woman; which in 
France is impossible. Even that fact is of some importance, but 
less so than what follows. In every country whatsoever, if any 
principle has a deep root in the moral feelings of the people, we 
may rely upon its showing itself, by a thousand evidences amongst 
the very lowest ranks, and in their daily intercourse, and their 
undress manners. Now in England there is, and always has been, 
a manly feeling, most widely diffused, of unwillingness to see labors 
of a coarse order, or requiring muscular exertions, thrown upon 
women. Pauperism, amongst other evil effects, has sometimes 
locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of Englishmen ; but 
never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of the old 
hereditary manliness. Sometimes at this day a gentleman, either 
from carelessness, or from overruling force of convenience, or from 
real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry his 
portmanteau for him ; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. 
And everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, nay 
elegant, labors of the hay field ; but in Great Britain women are 
never suffered to mow, which is a most athletic and exhausting 
labor, nor to load a cart, nor to drive a plough or hold it. In France, 
on the other hand, before the Revolution, (at which period the 
pseudo-homage, the lip-honor, was far more ostentatiously professed 
towards the female sex than at present,) a Frenchman of credit, and 
vouching for his statement by the whole weight of his name and 
personal responsibility, (M. Simond, now an American citizen,) 
records the following abominable scene as one of no uncommon 
occurrence. A woman was in some provinces yoked side hy side 
with an ass to the plough or the harrow; and M. Simond protests 
that it excited no horror to see the driver distributing his lashes im- 
partially between the woman and her brute yoke-fellow. So much 
for the wordy pomps of French gallantry. In England, we trust, 
and we believe, that any man, caught in such a situation, and in such 
an abuse of his power, (supposing the case, otherwise a possible 
one,) would be killed on the spot. 


Note 15. Page 41. 


Amongst people of humble rank in England, who only were ever 
asked in church, until the new-fangled systems of marriage came up 
within the last ten or fifteen years, during the currency of the three 
Sundays on which the banns were proclaimed by the clergyman from 


90 SHAKSPEARE. 


the reading desk, the young couple elect were said jocosely to be 
“hanging in the bell-ropes;” alluding perhaps to the joyous peal 
contingent on the final completion of the marriage. 


Nore 16. Page 53. 


In a little memoir of Milton, which the author of this article drew 
up some years ago fora public society, and which is printed in an 
abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that Dr. Johnson, who 
was meanly anxious to revive this slander against Milton, as well as 
some others, had supposed Milton himself to have this flagellation 
in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of his Latin poems, 
where, speaking of Cambridge, and declaring that he has no longer 
any pleasure in the thoughts of revisiting that university, he says, 


“ Nec duri libet usque minas preferre magistr1, 
Ceeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.” 


This last line the malicious critic would translate—‘“ And other 
things insufferable to a man of my temper.” But, as we then 
observed, ingenium is properly expressive of the intellectual consti- 
tution, whilst it is the moral constitution that suffers degradation 
from personal chastisement —the sense of honor, of personal 
dignity, of justice, &c. Jndoles is the proper term for this latter 
idea ; and in using the word ingenium, there cannot be a doubt that 
Milton alluded to the dry scholastic disputations, which were shock- 
ing and odious to his fine poetical genius. If, therefore, the vile 
story is still to be kept up in order to dishonor a great man, at any 
rate let it not in future be pretended that any countenance to such a 
slander can be drawn from the confessions of the poet himself. 


Norte 17. Page 62. 


And singular enough it is, as well as interesting, that Shakspeare 
had so entirely superseded to his own ear and memory the name 
Hamnet by the dramatic name of Hamlet, that in writing his will, 
he actually mis-spells the name of his friend Sadler, and calls him 
Hamlet. His son, however, who should have familiarized the true 
name to his ear, had then been dead for twenty years. 


Note 18. Page 66. 


“JT have heard that Mr. Shakspeare was a natural wit, without 
any art at all. Hee frequented the plays all his younger time, but in 
his elder days lived at Startford, and supplied the stage with two 
plays every year, and for itt had an allowance so large, that he spent 


NOTES. 91 


at the rate of 1,000/. a-year, as I have heard. Shakespeare, Dray- 
ton, and Ben Jonson, had a merie meeting, and it seems drank too 
hard, for Shakespear died of a feavour there contracted.” (Diary of 
the Rev. John Ward, A. M. Vicar of Stratford-upon-Avon, extend- 
ing from 1648 to 1679, p. 183. Lond. 1839, 8vo.) 


Note 19, Page 66. 


It is naturally to be supposed that Dr. Hall would attend the sick 
bed of bis father-in-law; and the discovery of this gentleman’s 
medical diary promised some gratification to our curiosity as to the 
cause of Shakspeare’s death. Unfortunately, it does not commence 
until the year 1617. 


Note 20. Page 67. 


An exception ought perhaps to be made for Sir Walter Scott and 
for Cervantes ; but with regard to all other writers, Dante, suppose, 
or Ariosto amongst Italians, Camoens amongst those of Portugal, 
Schiller amongst Germans, however ably they may have been 
naturalized in foreign languages, as all of those here mentioned 
(excepting only Ariosto) have in one part of their works been most 
powerfully naturalized in English, it still remains true, (and the 
very sale of the books is proof sufficient,) that an alien author never 
does take root in the general sympathies out of his own country ; 
he takes his station in libraries, he is read by the man of learned 
leisure, he is known and valued by the refined and the elegant, but 
he is not (what Shakspeare is for Germany and America) in any 
proper sense a popular favorite. 


Note 21. Page 68. 


It will occur to many readers, that perhaps Homer may furnish 
the sole exception to this sweeping assertion. Any but Homer is 
clearly and ludicrously below the level of the competition ; but even 
Homer, “ with his tail on,” (as the Scottish Highlanders say of 
their chieftains when belted by their ceremonial retinues,) musters 
nothing like the force which already follows Shakspeare ; and be it 
remembered, that Homer sleeps and has long slept as a subject of 
criticism or commentary, while in Germany as well as England, 
and now even in France, the gathering of wits to the vast equipage 
of Shakspeare is advancing in an accelerated ratio. There is, in 
fact, a great delusion current upon this subject. Innumerable refer- 
ences to Homer, and brief critical remarks on this or that pretension 
of Homer, this or that scene, this or that passage, lie scattered over 


92 SHAKSPEARE. 


literature ancient and modern ; but the express works dedicated to 
the separate service of Homer are, after all, not many. In Greek 
we have only the large Commentary of Eustathius, and the Scholia 
of Didymus, &c. ; in French little or nothing before the prose trans- 
lation of the seventeenth century, which Pope esteemed “elegant,” 
and the skirmishings of Madame Dacier, La Motte, &c.; in English, 
besides tbe various translations and their prefaces, (which, by the 
way, began as early as 1555,) nothing of much importance until the 
elaborate preface of Pope to the Iliad, and his elaborate postscript 
to the Odyssey — nothing certainly before that, and very little indeed 
since that, except Wood’s Essay on the Life and Genius of Homer. 
On the other hand, of the books written in illustration or investiga- 
tion of Shakspeare, a very considerable library might be formed in 
England, and another in Germany. 


Note 22. Page 70. 

Apartment is here used, as the reader will observe, in its true and 
continental acceptation, as a division or compartment of a house 
including many rooms; a suite of chambers, but a suite which is 
partitioned off, (as in palaces,) not a single chamber; a sense so 
commonly and so erroneously given to this word in England. 


Nore 23. Page 72. 


And hence, by parity of reason, under the opposite circumstances, 
under the circumstances which, instead of abolishing, most emphati- 
cally drew forth the sexual distinctions, viz., in the comic aspects of 
social intercourse, the reason that we see no women on the Greek 
stage ; the Greek Comedy, unless when it affects the extravagant 
fun of farce, rejects women. 


Norte 24. Page 75. 

It may be thought, however, by some readers, that AZschylus, in 
his fine phantom of Darius, has approached the English ghost. As 
a foreign ghost, we would wish (and we are sure that our excellent 
readers would wish) to show every courtesy and attention to this 
apparition of Darius. It has the advantage of being royal, an ad- 
vantage which it shares with the ghost of the royal Dane. Yet how 
different, how removed by a total world, from that or any of Shak- 
speare’s ghosts! Take that of Banquo, for instance. How 
shadowy, how unreal, yet how real! Darius is a mere state ghost 
—adiplomatic ghost. But Banquo — he exists only for Macbeth ; 
the ‘guests do not see him, yet how solemn, how real, how heart- 
searching he is. 


NOTES. 93 


Note 25. Page 77. 


Caliban has not yet been thoroughly fathomed. For all Shak- 
speare’s great creations are like works of nature, subjects of unex- 
haustible study. It was this character of whom Charles I. and 
some of his ministers expressed such fervent admiration; and, 
among other circumstances, most justly they admired the new 
language almost with which he is endowed, for the purpose of 
expressing his fiendish and yet carnal thoughts of hatred to his 
master. Caliban is evidently not meant for scorn, but for abomina- 
tion mixed with fear and partial respect. He is purposely brought 
into contrast with the drunken Trinculo and Stephano, with an 
advantageous result. He is much more intellectual than either, 
uses a more elevated language, not disfigured by vulgarisms, and is 
not liable to the low passion for plunder as they are. He is mortal, 
doubtless, as his “dam” (for Shakspeare will not call her mother) 
Sycorax. But he inherits from her such qualities of power as a 
witch could be supposed to bequeath. He trembles indeed before 
Prospero; but that is, as we are to understand, through the moral 
superiority of Prospero in Christian wisdom ; for when he finds 
himself in the presence of dissolute and unprincipled men, he rises 
at once into the dignity of intellectual power. 


* phan" wid tor 
lee wd “wa: 
ey anny Were 
j “acon” Ubien oe VE Py 


Tifa 1h nla hadsirysise) 
ins ‘ rei tp do@ UR" baat 


P.O.P i. 


ALEXANDER Pops, the most brilliant of all wits who 
have at any period applied themselves to the poetic 
treatment of human manners, to the selecting from the 
play of human character what is picturesque, or the 
arresting what is fugitive, was born in the city of 
London on the 21st! day of May, in the memorable 
year 1688; about six months, therefore, before the 
landing of the Prince of Orange, and the opening of 
that great revolution which gave the final ratification to 
all previous revolutions of that tempestuous century. 
By the “city” of London the reader is to understand 
us as speaking with technical accuracy of that district, 
which lies within the ancient walls and the jurisdiction 
of the lord mayor. The parents of Pope, there is 
good reason to think, were of ‘ gentle blood,” which is 
the expression of the poet himself when describing 
them in verse. His mother was so undoubtedly ; and 
her illustrious son, in speaking of her to Lord Harvey, 
ata time when any exaggeration was open to an easy 


96 POPE. 


refutation, and writing in a spirit most likely to provoke 
it, does not scruple to say, with a tone of dignified 
haughtiness not unbecoming the situation of a filial 
champion on behalf of an insulted mother, that by 
birth and descent she was not below that young lady, 
(one of the two beautiful Miss Lepels,) whom his 
lordship had selected from all the choir of court beauties 
as the future mother of his children. Of Pope’s ex- 
traction and immediate lineage for a space of two 
generations we know enough. Beyond that we know 
little. Of this little a part is dubious; and what we 
are disposed to receive as not dubious, rests chiefly on 
his own authority. In the prologue to his Satires, 
having occasion to notice the lampooners of the times, 
who had represented his father as ‘a mechanic, a 
hatter, a farmer, nay a bankrupt,” he feels himself 
called upon to state the truth about his parents; and 
naturally much more so at a time when the low scur- 
rilities of these obscure libellers had been adopted, 
accredited, and diffused by persons so distinguished in 
all points of personal accomplishment and rank as 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Lord Harvey: 
‘* hard as thy heart,” was one of the lines in their joint 
pasquinade, “hard as thy heart, and as thy birth 
obscure.” Accordingly he makes the following formal 
statement: ‘* Mr. Pope’s father was of a gentleman’s 
family in Oxfordshire, the head of which was the Earl 
of Downe. His mother was the daughter of William 
Turner, Esq., of York. She had three brothers, one 
of whom was killed; another died in the service of 
King Charles [meaning Charles I.]; the eldest, follow-. 
ing his fortunes, and becoming a general officer in 


POPE. 97 


Spain, left her what estate remained after the seques- 
trations and forfeitures of her family.” The seques- 
trations here spoken of were those inflicted by the 
commissioners for the parliament; and usually they 
levied a fifth, or even two fifths, according to the 
apparent delinque@cy of the parties. But in such cases 
two great differences arose in the treatment of the 
royalists ; first, that the report was colored according 
to the interest which a man possessed, or other private 
means for biassing the commissioners; secondly, that 
often, when money could not be raised on mortgage to 
meet the sequestration, it became necessary to sell a 
family estate suddenly, and therefore in those times at 
great loss; so that a nominal fifth might be depressed 
by favor to a tenth, or raised by the necessity of sell- 
ing toa half. And hence might arise the small dowry 
of Mrs. Pope, notwithstanding ‘the family estate in 
Yorkshire had centred in her person. But, by the 
way, we see from the fact of the eldest brother having 
sought service in Spain, that Mrs. Pope was a Papist ; 
not, like her husband, by conversion, but by hereditary 
faith. ‘This account, as publicly thrown out in the way 
of challenge by Pope, was, however, sneered at by a 
certain Mr. Pottinger of those days, who, together with 
his absurd name, has been safely transmitted to pos- 
terity in connection with this single feat of having 
contradicted Alexander Pope. We read in a diary 
published by the Microcosm, ‘ Met a large hat, with a 
man under it.” And so, here, we cannot so properly 
say that Mr. Pottinger brings down the contradiction to 
our times, as that the contradiction brings down Mr. 
Pottinger. ‘+ Cousin Pope,” said Pottinger, “ had made 
7 


98 POPE. 


himself out a fine pedigree, but he wondered where he 
got it.” And he then goes on to plead in abatement of 
Pope’s pretensions, ‘ that an old maiden aunt, equally 
related,” (that is, standing in the same relation to him- 
self and to the poet,) “a great genealogist, who was 
always talking of her family, nevér mentioned this 
circumstance.” And again we are told, from another 
quarter, that the Earl of Guildford, after express inves- 
tigation of this matter, ‘‘ was sure that,” amongst the 
descendants of the Earls of Downe, * there was none 
of the name of Pope.” How it was that Lord Guild- 
ford came to have any connection with the affair, is not 
stated by the biographers of Pope; but we have ascer- 
tained that, by marriage with a female descendant from 
the Earls of Downe, he had come into possession of 
their English estates. 

Finally, though it is rather for the honor of the Earls 
of Downe than of Pope to make out the connection, 
we must observe that Lord Guildford’s testimony, if 
ever given at all, is simply negative ; he had found no 
proofs of the connection, but he had not found any 
proofs to destroy it; whilst, on the other hand, it ought 
to be mentioned, though unaccountably overlooked by 
all previous biographers, that one of Pope’s anonymous 
enemies, who hated him personally, but was apparently 
master of his family history, and too honorable to belie 
his own convictions, expressly affirms of his own 
authority, and without reference to any claim put 
forward by Pope, that he was descended from a junior 
branch of the Downe family. Which testimony has a 
double value ; first, as corroborating the probability of 
Pope’s statement viewed in the light of a fact; and, 


\ 


POPE. 99 


secondly, as corroborating that same statement viewed 
in the light of a current story, true or false, and not as 
a disingenuous fiction put forward by Pope to confute 
Lord Harvey. 

It is probable to us, that the Popes, who had. been 
originally transplanted from England to Ireland, had in 
the person of some cadet been re-transplanted to Eng- 
land; and that having in that way been disconnected 
from all personal recognition, and all local memorials 
of the capital house, by this sort of postliminium, the 
junior branch had ceased to cherish the honor of a 
descent which was now divided from all direct advan- 
tage. At all events, the researches of Pope’s biogra- 
phers have not been able to trace him farther back in 
the paternal line than to his grandfather; and he 
(which is odd enough, considering the popery of his 
descendants) was a clergyman of the established 
church in Hampshire. This grandfather had two sons. 
Of the eldest nothing is recorded beyond the three 
facts, that he went to Oxford, that he died there, and 
that he spent the family estate.2 The younger son, 
whose name was Alexander, had been sent when 
young, in some commercial character, to Lisbon ;3 
and there it was, in that centre of bigotry, that he 
became a sincere and most disinterested Catholic. He 
returned to England ; married a Catholic young widow ; 
and became the father of a second Alexander Pope, 
ultra Sauromatas notus et Antipodes. 

By his own account to Spence, Pope learned ‘“ very 
early to read;” and writing he taught himself ‘ by 
copying from printed books;” all which seems to 
argue, that, as an only child, with an indolent father 


100 POPE. 


and a most indulgent mother, he was not molested with 
much schooling in his infancy. Only one adventure is 
recorded of -his childhood, viz., that he was attacked 
by a cow, thrown down, and wounded in the throat. 

Pope escaped this disagreeable kind of vaccination 
without serious injury, and was not farther tormented 
by cows or schoolmasters until he was about eight 
years old, when the family priest, that is, we presume, 
the confessor of his parents, taught him, agreeably to 
the Jesuit system, the rudiments of Greek and Latin 
concurrently. This priest was named Banister ; and his 
name is frequently employed, together with other ficti- 
tious names, by way of signature to the notes in the 
Dunciad, an artifice which was adopted for the sake of 
giving a characteristic variety to the notes, according 
to the tone required for the illustration of the text. 
From his tuition Pope was at length dismissed to a 
Catholic school at ‘Twyford, near Winchester. The 
selection of a school in this neighborhood, though 
certainly the choice of a Catholic family was much 
limited, points apparently to the old Hampshire con- 
nection of his father. Here an incident occurred 
which most powerfully illustrates the original and con- 
stitutional determination to satire of this irritable poet. 
He knew himself so accurately, that in after times, 
half by way of boast, half of confession, he says, 


** But touch me, and no Minister so sore: 
W hoe’er offends, at some unlucky time 
Slides into verse and hitches in a rhyme, 
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, 
And the sad burthen of some merry song.” 


Already, it seems, in childhood he had the same 


POPE. 101 


irresistible instinct, victorious over the strongest sense 
of personal danger. He wrote a bitter satire upon the 
presiding pedagogue, was brutally punished for this 
youthful indiscretion, and indignantly removed by his 
parents from the school. Mr. Roscoe speaks of Pope’s 
personal experience as necessarily unfavorable to pub- 
lic schools ; but in reality he knew nothing of public 
schools. All the establishments for Papists were 
narrow, and suited to their political depression ; and 
his parents were too sincerely anxious for their son’s 
religious principles to risk the contagion of Protestant 
association by sending him elsewhere. 

From the scene? of his disgrace and illiberal punish- 
ment, he passed, according to the received accounts, 
under the tuition of several other masters in rapid 
succession. But it is the less necessary to trouble the 
reader with their names, as Pope himself assures us, 
that he learned nothing from any of them. To 
Banister he had been indebted for such trivial elements 
of a schoolboy’s learning as he possessed at all, 
excepting those which he had taught himself. And 
upon himself it was, and his own admirable faculties, 
that he was now finally thrown for the rest of his 
education, at an age so immature that many boys are 
then first entering their academic career. Pope is 
supposed to have been scarcely twelve years old when 
he assumed the office of self-tuition, and bade farewell 
for ever to schools and tutors. 

Such a phenomenon is at any rate striking. It is 
the more so, under the circumstances which attended 
the plan, and under the results which justified its exe- 
cution. It seems, as regards the plan, hardly less 


102 POPE. 


strange that prudent parents should have acquiesced 
in a scheme of so much peril to his intellectual inter- 
ests, than that the son, as regards the execution, should 
have justified their confidence by his final success, 
More especially this confidence surprises us in the 
father. A doating mother might shut her eyes to all 
remote evils in the present gratification to her affec- 
tions; but Pope’s father was a man of sense and 
principle ; he must have weighed the risks besetting a 
boy left to his own intellectual guidance ; and to these 
risks he would allow the more weight from his own 
conscious defect of scholarship and inability to guide 
or even to accompany his son’s studies. He could 
neither direct the proper choice of studies; nor in any 
one study taken separately could he suggest the proper 
choice of books. 

The case we apprehend to have been this. Alexan- 
der Pope, the elder, was a man of philosophical desires 
and unambitious character. Quiet and seclusion and 
innocence Of life, —these were what he affected for 
himself; and that whch had been found available for 
his own happiness, he might reasonably wish for his 
son. The two hinges upon which his plans may be 
supposed to have turned, were, first, the political 
degradation of his sect; and, secondly, the fact that 
his son was an on'y child. Had he been a Protestant, 
or had he, though a Papist, been burthened with a 
large family of children, he would doubtless have 
pursued a different course. But to him, and, as he 
sincerely hoped, to his son, the strife after civil honors 
was sternly barred. Apostasy only could lay it open. 
And, as the sentiments of honor and duty in this point 


POPE. 103 


fell in with the vices of his temperament, high princi- 
ple concurring with his constitutional love of ease, we 
need not wonder that he should early retire from com- 
merce with a very moderate competence, or that he 
should suppose the same fortune sufficient for one who 
was to stand in the same position. This son was from 
his birth deformed. That made it probable that he 
might not marry. If he should, and happened to have 
children, a small family would find an adequate pro- 
vision in the patrimonial funds; and a large one at the 
worst could only throw him upon the same commercial 
exertions to which he had been obliged himself. The 
Roman Catholics, indeed, were just then situated as our 
modern Quakers are. Law to the one, as conscience 
to the other, closed all modes of active employment 
except that of commercial industry. Either his son, 
therefore, would be a rustic recluse, or, like himself, 
he would be a merchant. 

With such prospects, what need of an elaborate 
education? And where was such an education to be 
sought? At the petty establishments of the suffering 
Catholics, the instruction, as he had found experimen- 
tally, was poor. At the great national establishments 
his son would be a degraded person; one who was 
permanently repelled from every arena of honor, and 
sometimes, as in cases of public danger, was banished 
from the capital, deprived of his house, left defenceless 
against common ruffians, and rendered liable to the 
control of every village magistrate. To one in these 
circumstances solitude was the wisest position, and the 
best qualification, for that was an education that would 
furnish aids to solitary thought. No need for brilliant 


104 POPE. 


accomplishments to him who must never display them ; 
forensic arts, pulpit erudition, senatorial eloquence, 
academical accomplishments — these would be lost to 
one against whom the courts, the pulpit, the senate, the 
universities, were closed. Nay, by possibility worse 
than lost; they might prove so many snares or positive 
bribes to apostasy. Plain English, therefore, and the 
high thinking of his compatriot authors, might prove 
the best provision for the mind of an English Papist 
destined to seclusion. 

Such are the considerations under which we read 
and interpret the conduct of Pope’s parents ; and they 
lead us to regard as wise and conscientious a scheme 
which, under ordinary circumstances, would have been 
pitiably foolish. And be it remembered, that to these 
considerations, derived exclusively from the civil cir- 
cumstances of the family, were superadded others 
derived from the astonishing prematurity of the indi- 
vidual. That boy who could write at twelve years of 
age the beautiful and touching stanzas on Solitude, 
might well be trusted with the superintendence of his 
own studies. And the stripling of sixteen, who could 
so far transcend in good sense the accomplished states- 
men or men of the world with whom he afterwards 
corresponded, might challenge confidence for such a 
choice of books as would best promote the develop- 
ment of his own faculties. 

In reality, one so finely endowed as Alexander Pope, 
could not easily lose his way in the most extensive or 
ill-digested library. And though he tells Atterbury, 
that at one time he abused his opportunities by reading 
controversial divinity, we may be sure that his own 


POPE. 105 


native activities, and the elasticity of his mind, would 
speedily recoil into a just equilibrium of study, under 
wider and happier opportunities. Reading, indeed, for 
a person like Pope, is rather valuable as a means of 
exciting his own energies, and of feeding his own 
sensibilities, than for any direct acquisitions of know- 
ledge, or for any trains of systematic research. All 
men are destined to devour much rubbish between the 
cradle and the grave; and doubtless the man who is 
wisest in the choice of his books, will have read many 
a page before he dies that a thoughtful review would 
pronounce worthless. This is the fate of all men. 
But the reading of Pope, as a general result or mea- 
sure of his judicious choice, is best justified in his 
writings. They show him well furnished with what- 
soever he wanted for matter or for embellishment, for 
argument or illustration, for example and model, or for 
direct and explicit imitation. 

Possibly, as we have already suggested, within the 
range of English literature Pope might have found all 
that he wanted. But variety the widest has its uses ; 
and, for the extension of his influence with the polished 
classes amongst whom he lived, he did wisely to add 
other languages ; and a question has thus arisen with 
regard to the extent of Pope’s attainments asa self- 
taught linguist. A man, or even a boy, of great 
originality, may happen to succeed best, in working his 
own native mines of thought, by his unassisted ener- 
gies. Here it is granted that a tutor, a guide, or even 
a companion, may be dispensed with, and even bene- 
ficially. But in the case of foreign languages, in 
attaining this machinery of literature, though anomalies 


106 POPE. 


even here do arise, and men there are, like Joseph 
Scaliger, who form their own dictionaries and gram- 
mars in the mere process of reading an unknown 
language, by far the major part of students will lose 
their time by rejecting the aid of tutors. As there has 
been much difference of opinion with regard to Pope’s 
skill in languages, we shall briefly collate and bring 
into one focus the stray notices. 

As to the French, Voltaire, who knew Pope person- 
ally, declared that he “ could hardly read it, and spoke 
not one syllable of the language.” But perhaps Vol- 
taire might dislike Pope? On the contrary, he was 
acquainted with his works, and admired them to the 
very level of their merits. Speaking of him after 
death to Frederick of Prussia, he prefers him to 
Horace and Boileau, asserting that, by comparison 
with them, 


‘Pope approfondit ce qu’ils ont effleuré. 
D’un esprit plus hardi, d’un pas plus assuré, 
Il porta le flambeau dans l’abime de létre ; 
Et Vhomme avec lui seul apprit 4 se connoitre. 
L’art quelquefois frivole, et quelquefois divine, 
L’art des vers est dans Pope utile au genre humain.” 


This is not a wise account of Pope, for it does not 
abstract the characteristic feature of his power ; but it 
is a very kind one. And of course Voltaire could not 
have meant any unkindness in denying his knowledge 
of French. But he was certainly wrong. Pope, in 
his presence, would decline to speak or to read a 
language of which the pronunciation was confessedly 
beyond him. Or, if he did, the impression left would 
be still worse. In fact, no man ever will pronounce or 


POPE. 107 


talk a language which he does not use, for some part 
of every day, in the real intercourse of life. But that 
Pope read French of an ordinary cast with fluency 
enough, is evident from the extensive use which he 
made of Madame Dacier’s labors on the Iliad, and still 
more of La Valterie’s prose translation of the Iliad. 
Already in the year 1718, and long before his personal 
knowledge of Voltaire, Pope had shown his accurate 
acquaintance with some voluminous French authors, in 
a way which, we suspect, was equally surprising and 
offensive to his noble correspondent. The Duke of 
Buckingham > had addressed to Pope a letter, contain- 
ing some account of the controversy about Homer, 
which had then been recently carried on in France 
between La Motte and Madame Dacier. ‘This account 
was delivered with an air of teaching, which was very 
little in harmony with its excessive shallowness. Pope, 
who sustained the part of pupil in this interlude, re- 
plied in a manner that exhibited a knowledge of the 
parties concerned in the controversy much superior to 
that of the duke. In particular, he characterized the 
excellent notes upon Horace of M. Dacier, the hus- 
band, in very just terms, as distinguished from those of 
his conceited and half-learned wife ; and the whole 
reply of Pope seems very much as though he had 
been playing off a mystification on his grace. Un- 
doubtedly the pompous duke felt that he had caught a 
Tartar. Now M. Dacier’s Horace, which, with the 
text, fills nine volumes, Pope could not have read 
except in French; for they are not even yet translated 
into English. Besides, Pope read critically the French 
translations of his own Essay on Man, Essay on 


108 POPE. 


Criticism, Rape of the Lock, &c. He spoke of them 
as a critic; and it was at no time a fault of Pope’s to 
make false pretensions. All readers of Pope’s Satires 
must also recollect numerous proofs, that he had read 
Boileau with so much feeling of his peculiar merit, 
that he has appropriated and naturalized in English 
some of his best-passages. Voltaire was, therefore, 
certainly wrong. 

Of Italian literature, meantime, Pope knew little or 
nothing; and simply because he knew nothing of the 
language. ‘Tasso, indeed, he admired ; and, which is 
singular, more than Ariosto. But we believe that he 
had read him only in English; and it is certain that he 
could not take up an Italian author, either in prose or 
verse, for the unaffected amusement of his leisure. 

Greek, we all know has been denied to Pope, ever 
since he translated Homer, and chiefly in consequence 
of that translation. This seems at first sight unfair, 
because criticism has not succeeded in fixing upon 
Pope any errors of ignorance. His deviations from 
Homer were uniformly the result of imperfect sympa- 
thy with the naked simplicity of the antique, and 
therefore wilful deviations, not (like those of his more 
pretending competitors, Addison and Tickell) pure 
blunders of misapprehension. But yet it is not incon- 
sistent with this concession to Pope’s merits, that we 
must avow our belief in his thorough ignorance of 
Greek when he first commenced his task. And to us 
it seems astonishing that nobody should have adverted 
to that fact as a sufficient solution, and in fact the only 
plausible solution, of Pope’s excessive depression of 
spirits in the earliest stage of his labors. This depres- 


POPE. 109 


sion, after he had once pledged himself to his sub- 
scribers for the fulfilment of his task, arose from, and 
could have arisen from nothing else than, his conscious 
ignorance of Greek in connection with the solemn 
responsibilities he had assumed in the face of a great 
nation. Nay, even countries as presumptuously dis- 
dainful of tramontane literature as Italy took an inter- 
est in this memorable undertaking. Bishop Berkeley 
found Salvini reading it at Florence; and Madame 
Dacier even, who read little but Greek, and certainly 
no English until then, condescended to study it. Pope’s 
dejection, therefore, or rather agitation (for it impressed 
by sympathy a tumultuous character upon his dreams, 
which lasted for years after the cause had ceased to 
operate) was perfectly natural under the explanation 
we have given, but not otherwise. And how did he 
surmount this unhappy self-distrust ? Paradoxical as it 
may sound, we will venture to say, that, with the innu- 
merable aids for interpreting Homer which even then 
existed, a man sufficiently acquainted with Latin might 
make a translation even critically exact. This Pope 
was not long in discovering. Other alleviations of his 
labor concurred, and in a ratio daily increasing. 

The same formulse were continually recurring, such 
as, 


* But him answering, thus addressed the swift-footed Achilles ;? 
Or, 


“ But him sternly beholding, thus spoke Agamemnon the king 
of men.” 


Then, again, universally the Homeric Greek, from 
many causes, is easy ; and especially from these two: 


110 POPE, 


1st, The simplicity of the thought, which never gathers 
into those perplexed knots of rhetorical condensation, 
which we find in the dramatic poets of a higher civi- 
lization. 2dly, From the constant bounds set to the 
expansion of the thought by the form of the metre ; an 
advantage of verse which makes the poets so much 
easier to a beginner in the German language than the 
illimitable weavers of prose. The line or the stanza 
reins up the poet tightly to his theme, and will not 
suffer him to expatiate. Gradually, therefore, Pope 
came to read the Homeric Greek, but never accu- 
rately ; nor did he ever read Eustathius without aid 
from Latin. As to any knowledge of the Attic Greek, 
of the Greek of the dramatists, the Greek of Plato, 
the Greek of Demosthenes, Pope neither had it nor 
affected to have it. Indeed it was no foible of Pope’s, 
as we will repeat, to make claims which he had not, 
or even to dwell ostentatiously upon those which he 
had. And with respect to Greek in particular, there is 
a manuscript letter in existence from Pope to a Mr. 
Bridges at Falham, which, speaking of the original 
Homer, distinctly records the knowledge which he had 
of his own “imperfectness in the language.” Chap- 
man, a most spirited translator of Homer, probably 
had no very critical skill in Greek; and Hobbes was, 
beyond all question, as poor a Grecian as he was a 
doggerel translator; yet in this letter Pope professes 
his willing submission to the “ authority” of Chapman 
and Hobbes, as superior to his own. 

Finally, in Latin Pope was a “ considerable profi- 
cient,” even by the cautious testimony of Dr. Johnson; 
and in this language only the doctor was an accom- 


POPE. 111 


plished critic. If Pope had really the proficiency here 
ascribed to him, he must have had it already in his 
boyish years; for the translation from Statius, which is 
the principal monument of his skill, was executed 
before he was fourteen. We have taken the trouble to 
throw a hasty glance over it; and whilst we readily 
admit the extraordinary talent which it shows, as do all 
the juvenile essays of Pope, we cannot allow that it 
argues any accurate skill in Latin. The word Maléa, 
as we have seen noticed by some editor, he makes 
Maléa; which in itself, as the name was not of com- 
mon occurrence, would not have been an error worth 
noticing ; but, taken in connection with the certainty 
that Pope had the original line before him — 


“ Arripit ex templo Malee de valle resurgens,” 


when not merely the scanning theoretically, but the 
whole rhythmus practically, to the most obtuse ear, 
would be annihilated by Pope’s false quantity, is a 
blunder which serves to show his utter ignorance of 
prosody. But, even as a version of the sense, with 
every allowance for a poet’s license of compression 
and expansion, Pope’s translation is defective, and 
argues an occasional inability to construe the text. 
For instance, at the council summoned by Jupiter, it is 
said that he at his first entrance seats himself upon his 
starry throne, but not so the inferior gods ; 

“ Nec protinus ausi 


Ceelicole, veniam donec pater ipse sedendi 
Tranquilla jubet esse manu.” 


In which passage there is a slight obscurity, from the 
ellipsis of the word sedere, or sese locare; but the 


112 POPE. 


meaning is evidently that the other gods did not pre- 
sume to sit down protinus, that is, in immediate suc- 
cession to Jupiter, and interpreting his example as a 
tacit license to do so, until, by a gentle wave of his 
hand, the supreme father signifies his express permis- 
sion to take their seats. But Pope, manifestly unable 
to extract any sense from the passage, translates thus : 


“ At Jove’s assent the deities around 
In solemn state the consistory crown’d ; ”? 


where at once the whole picturesque solemnity of the 
celestial ritual melts into the vaguest generalities. 
Again, at v. 178, rupteque vices is translated, ** and all 
the ties of nature broke ;” but by vices is indicated 
the alternate reign of the two brothers, as ratified by 
mutual oaths, and subsequently violated by Eteocles. 
Other mistakes might be cited, which seem to prove that 
Pope, like most self-taught linguists, was a very imper- 
fect one. Pope, in short, never rose to. sucha point 
in classical literature as to read either Greek or Latin 
authors without effort, and for his private amusement. 
The result, therefore, of Pope’s self-tuition appears 
to us, considered in the light of an attempt to acquire 
certain accomplishments of knowledge, a most com- 
plete failure. Asa linguist, he read no language with 
ease ; none with pleasure to himself; and none with so 
much accuracy as could have carried him through the 
most popular author with a general independence on 
interpreters. But, considered with a view to his par- 
ticular faculties and slumbering originality of power, 
which required perhaps the stimulation of accident to 
arouse them effectually, we are very much disposed to 


POPE, 113 


think that the very failure of his education’ as an 
artificial training was a great advantage finally for 
inclining his mind to throw itself, by way of indemni- 
fication, upon its native powers. Had he attained, as 
with better tuition he would have attained, distinguished 
excellence as a scholar, or as a student of science, the 
chances are many that he would have settled down 
into such studies as thousands could pursue not less 
successfully than he; whilst as it was, the very dissat- 
isfaction which he could not but feel with his slender 
attainments, must have given him a strong motive for 
cultivating those impulses of original power which he 
felt continually stirring within him, and which were 
vivified into trials of competition as often as any dis- 
tinguished excellence was introduced to his knowledge. 

Pope’s father, at the time of his birth, lived in Lom- 
bard Street;7 a street still familiar to the public eye, 
from its adjacency to some of the chief metropolitan 
establishments, and to the English ear possessing a 
degree of historical importance ; first, as the residence 
of those Lombards, or Milanese, who affiliated our 
infant commerce to the matron splendors of the Adri- 
atic and the Mediterranean ; next, as the central resort 
of those jewellers, or ‘ goldsmiths,” as they were 
styled, who performed all the functions of modern 
bankers from the period of the parliamentary war to 
the rise of the Bank of England, that is, for six years 
after the birth of Pope; and, lastly, as the seat, until 
lately, of that vast Post Office, through which, for so 
long a period, has passed the correspondence of all 
nations and languages, upon a scale unknown to any 
other country. In this street Alexander Pope the elder 

8 


114 POPE. 


had a house, and a warehouse, we presume, annexed, 
in which he conducted the wholesale business of a 
linen merchant. As soon as he had made a moderate 
fortune he retired from business, first to Kensington, 
and afterwards to Binfield, in Windsor Forest. The 
period of this migration is not assigned by any writer. 
It is probable that a prudent man would not adopt it 
with any prospect of having more children. But this 
chance might be considered as already extinguished at 
the birth of Pope; for though his father had then only 
attained his forty-fourth year, Mrs. Pope had completed 
her forty-eighth. It is probable, from the interval of 
seven days which is said to have elapsed between 
Pope’s punishment and his removal from the school, 
that his parents were then living at such a distance 
from him as to prevent his ready communication with 
them, else we may be sure that Mrs. Pope would have 
flown on the wings of love and wrath to the rescue of 
her darling. Supposing, therefore, as we do suppose, 
that Mr. Bromley’s school in London was the scene of 
his disgrace, it would appear on this argument that his 
parents were then living in Windsor Forest. And this 
hypothesis falls in with another anecdote in Pope’s life, 
which we know partly upon his own authority. He 
tells Wycherley that he had seen Dryden, and barely 
seen him. Virgilium vidi tantum. This is presumed 
to have been in Will’s Coffee-house, whither any 
person in search of Dryden would of course resort ; 
and it must have been before Pope was twelve years 
old, for Dryden died in 1700. Now there is a letter 
of Sir Charles Wogan’s, stating that he first took Pope 
to Will’s; and his words are, ‘from our forest.” 


POPE. 115 


Consequently, at that period, when he had not com- 
pleted his twelfth year, Pope was already living in the 
forest. 

From this period, and so long as the genial spirits of 
youth lasted, Pope’s life must have been one dream of 
pleasure. He tells Lord Harvey that his mother did 
not spoil him; but that was no doubt because there 
was no room for wilfulness or waywardness on either 
side, when all was one placid scene of parental obedi- 
ence and gentle filial authority. We feel persuaded 
that, if not in words, in spirit and inclination, they 
would, in any notes they might have occasion to write, 
subscribe themselves ‘ your dutiful parents.” And of 
what consequence in whose hands were the reins which 
were never needed? Every reader must be pleased 
to know that these idolizing parents lived to see their 
son at the very summitt of his public elevation; even 
his father lived two years and a half after the publica- 
tion of his Homer had commenced, and when his 
fortune was made; and his mother lived for nearly 
eighteen years more. What a felicity for her, how 
rare and how perfect, to find that he, who to her 
maternal eyes was naturally the most perfect of human 
beings, and the idol of her heart, had already been the 
idol of the nation before he had completed his youth. 
She had also another blessing not always commanded 
by the most devoted love; many sons there are who 
think it essential to manliness that they should treat 
their mother’s doating anxiety with levity, or even 
ridicule. But Pope, who was the model of a good son, 
never swerved in words, manners, or conduct, from the ' 
most respectful tenderness, or intermitted the piety of 


116 POPE. 


his atténtions. And so far did he carry this regard 
for his mother’s comfort, that, well knowing how she 
lived upon his presence or by his image, he denied 
himself for many years all excursions which could not 
be fully accomplished within the revolution of a week. 
And to this cause, combined with the excessive length 
of his mother’s life, must be ascribed the fact that 
Pope never went abroad ; not to Italy with Thomson or 
with Berkeley, or any of his diplomatic friends; not to 
Ireland, where his presence would have been hailed as 
a national honor; not even to France, on a visit to his 
admiring and admired friend Lord Bolingbroke. For 
as to the fear of sea-sickness, that did not arise until a 
late period of his life; and at any period would not 
have operated to prevent his crossing from Dover to 
Calais. It is possible that, in his earlier and more 
sanguine years, all the perfection of his filial love may 
not have availed to prevent him from now and then 
breathing a secret murmur at confinement so constant. 
But it is certain that, long before he passed the meri- 
dian of his life, Pope had come to view this confine- 
ment with far other thoughts. Experience had then 
taught him, that to no man is the privilege granted of 
possessing more than one or two friends who are such 
in extremity. By that time he had come to view his 
mother’s death with fear and anguish. She, he knew 
by many a sign, would have been happy to lay down 
her life for his sake; but for others, even those who 
were the most friendly and the most constant in their 
attentions, he felt but too certainly that his death, or his 
heavy affliction, might cost them a few sighs, but 
would not materially disturb their peace of mind. ‘It 


POPE. 117 


is but in a very narrow circle,” says he, in a confiden- 
tial letter, ‘¢ that friendship walks in this world, and I 
care not to tread out of it more than I needs must; 
knowing well it is but to two or three, (if quite so 
many,) that any man’s welfare or memory can be of 
consequence.” After such acknowledgments, we are 
not surprised to find him writing thus of his mother, 
and his fearful struggles to fight off the shock of his 
mother’s death, at a time when it was rapidly ap- 
proaching. After having said of a friend’s death, “ the 
subject is beyond writing upon, beyond cure or ease by 
reason or reflection, beyond all but one thought, that it 
is the will of God,” he goes on thus, “So will the 
death of my mother be, which now I tremble at, now 
resign to, now bring close. to me, now set farther off ; 
every day alters, turns me about, confuses my whole 
frame of mind.” ‘There is no pleasure, he adds, which 
the world can give “ equivalent to countervail either 
the death of one I have so long lived with, or of one I 
have so long lived for.” How will he comfort himself 
after her death? ‘I have nothing left but to turn my 
thoughts to one comfort, the last we usually think of, 
though the only one we should in wisdom depend 
upon. I sit in her room, and she is always present 
before me but when I sleep. I wonder I am so well. 
I have shed many tears; but now I weep at nothing.” 
A man, therefore, happier than Pope in his domestic 
relations cannot easily have lived. It is true these 
relations were circumscribed; had they been wider, 
they could not have been so happy. But Pope was 
equally fortunate in his social relations. What, indeed, 
most of all surprises us, is the courteous, flattering, 


118 POPE. 


and even brilliant reception which Pope found from his 
earliest boyhood amongst the most accomplished men 
of the world. Wits, courtiers, statesmen, grandees the 
most dignified, and men of fashion the most brilliant, 
all alike treated him not only with pointed kindness, 
but with a respect that seemed to acknowledge him as 
their intellectual superior. Without rank, high birth, 
fortune, without even a literary name, and in defiance 
of a deformed person, Pope, whilst yet only sixteen 
years of age, was caressed, and even honored; and 
all this with no one recommendation but simply the 
knowledge of his dedication to letters, and the prema- 
ture expectations which he raised of future excellence. 
Sir William Trumbull, a veteran statesman, who had 
held the highest stations, both diplomatic and ministe- 
rial, made him his daily companion. . Wycherley, the 
old roué of the town, a second-rate wit, but not the 
less jealous on that account, showed the utmost defer- 
ence to one whom, as a man of fashion, he must have 
regarded with contempt, and between whom and him- 
self there were nearly “ fifty good years of fair and 
foul weather.” Cromwell,® a fox-hunting country gen- 
tleman, but uniting with that character the pretensions 
of a wit, and affecting also the reputation of a rake, 
cultivated his regard with zeal and conscious inferi- 
ority. Nay, which never in any other instance hap- 
pened to the most fortunate poet, his very inaugural 
essays in verse were treated, not as prelusive efforts of 
auspicious promise, but as finished works of art, enti- 
tled to take their station amongst the literature of the 
land; and in the most worthless of all his poems, 
Walsh, an established authority, and whom Dryden 


POPE. 119 


pronounced the ablest critic of the age, found proofs of 
equality with Virgil. 

The literary correspondence with these -gentlemen is 
interesting, as a model of what once passed for fine 
letter-writing. Every nerve was strained to outdo 
each other in carving all thoughts into a fillagree work 
of rhetoric ; and the ama@bzan contest was like that 
between two village cocks from neighboring farms 
endeavoring to overcrow each other. ‘To us, in this 
age of purer and more masculine taste, the whole 
scene takes the ludicrous air of old and young fops 
dancing a minuet with each other, practising the most 
elaborate grimaces, sinkings and risings the most awful, 
bows the most overshadowing, until plain walking, 
running, or the motions of natural dancing, are thought 
too insipid for endurance. In this instance the taste 
had perhaps really been borrowed from France, though 
often enough we impute to France what is the native 
growth of all minds placed in similar circumstances. 
Madame de Sevigne’s Letters were really models of 
grace. But Balzac, whose letters, however, are not 
without interest, had in some measure formed himself 
upon the truly magnificent rhetoric of Pliny and 
Seneca. Pope and his correspondents, meantime, 
degraded the dignity of rhetoric, by applying it to 
trivial commonplaces of compliment; whereas Seneca 
applied it to the grandest themes which life or contem- 
plation can supply. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
on first coming amongst the wits of the day, naturally 
adopted their style. She found this sort of euphuism 
established ; and it was not for a very young woman to 
oppose it. But her masculine understanding and pow- 


120 POPE. 


erful good sense, shaken free, besides, from all local 
follies by travels and extensive commerce with the 
world, first threw off these glittering chains of affecta- 
tion. Dean Swift, by the very constitution of his 
mind, plain, sinewy, nervous, and courting only the 
strength that allies itself with homeliness, was always 
indisposed to this mode of correspondence. And, 
finally, Pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and 
his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside 
altogether. One reason doubtless was, that he found 
it too fatiguing; since in this way of letter-writing he 
was put to as much expense of wit in amusing an indi- 
vidual correspondent, as would for an equal extent 
have sufficed to delight the whole world. A funambu- 
list may harass his muscles and risk his neck on the 
tight-rope, but hardly to entertain his own family. 
Pope, however, had another reason for declining this 
showy system of fencing; and strange it is that he had 
not discovered this reason from the very first. As life 
advanced, it happened unavoidably that real business 
advanced; the careless condition of youth prompted 
no topics, or at least prescribed none, but such as were 
agreeable to the taste, and allowed of an ornamental 
coloring. But when downright business occurred, 
exchequer bills to be sold, meetings to be arranged, 
negotiations confided, difficulties to be explained, here 
and there by possibility a jest or two might be scat- 
tered, a witty allusion thrown in, or a sentiment inter- 
woven; but for the main body of the case, it neither 
could receive any ornamental treatment, nor if, by any 
effort of ingenuity, it had, could it look otherwise than 
silly and unreasonable ; 


 Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri.* 


POPE. 121 


Pope’s idleness, therefore, on the one hand, concur- 
ring with good sense and the necessities of business on 
the other, drove him to quit his gay rhetoric in letter- 
writing. But there are passages surviving in his 
correspondence which indicate, that, after all, had 
leisure and the coarse perplexities of life permitted it, 
he still looked with partiality upon his youthful style, 
and cherished it as a first love. But in this harsh 
world, as the course of true love,,so that of rhetoric, 
never did run smooth; and thus it happened that, with 
a lingering farewell, he felt himself forced to bid it 
adieu. Strange that any man should think his own 
sincere and confidential overflowings of thought and 
feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less 
valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of 
throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watch- 
ing their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his 
cups and balls. We of this age, who have formed our 
notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of 
Gray’s, the brilliancy of Lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tagu’s during her later life, and the mingled good sense 
and fine feeling of Cowper’s, value only those letters 
of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value. 
And even with regard to these, we may say that there 
is a great mistake made; the best of those later letters 
between Pope and Swift, &c., are not in themselves at 
all superior to the letters of sensible and accomplished 
women, such as leave every town in the island by 
every post. Their chief interest is a derivative one; 
we are pleased with any letter, good or bad, which 
relates to men of such eminent talent ; and sometimes 
the subjects discussed have a separate interest for 


122 POPE. 


themselves. But as to the quality of the discussion, 
apart from the person discussing and the thing dis- 
cussed, so trivial is the value of these letters in a large 
proportion, that we cannot but wonder at the preposter- 
ous value which was set upon them by the writers.? 
Pope especially ought not to have his ethereal works 
loaded by the mass of trivial prose which is usually 
attached to them. . * 

This correspondence, meantime, with the wits of the 
time, though one mode by which, in the absence of 
reviews, the reputation of an author was spread, did 
not perhaps serve the interests of Pope so effectually . 
as the poems which in this way he circulated in those - 
classes of English society whose favor he chiefly — 
courted. One of his friends, the truly kind and ac- 
complished Sir William Trumbull, served him in that 
way, and perhaps in another eventually even’ more 
important. The library of Pope’s father was com- 
posed exclusively of polemical divinity, a proof, by 
the way, that he was not a blind convert to the Roman 
Catholic faith; or, if he was so originally, had re- 
viewed the grounds of it, and adhered to it after 
strenuous study. In this dearth of books at his own 
home, and until he was able to influence his father in 
buying more extensively, Pope had benefited by the 
loans of his friends; amongst whom it is probable that 
Sir William, as one of the best scholars of the whole, 
might assist him most. He certainly offered him the 
most touching compliment, as it was also the wisest 
and most paternal counsel, when he besought him, as 
one goddess-born, to quit the convivial society of deep- 
drinkers : 


“ Ffeu, fuge nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe malis.” 


POPE. 123 


With these aids from friends of rank, and his way 
thus laid open to public favor, in the year 1709 Pope 
first came forward upon the stage of literature. The 
same year which terminated his legal minority intro- 
duced him to the public. Miscellanies in those days 
were almost periodical repositories of fugitive verse. 
Tonson happened at this time to be publishing one of 
some extent, the sixth volume of which offered a sort 
of ambush to the young aspirant of Windsor Forest, 
from which he might watch the public feeling. The 
volume was opened by Mr. Ambrose Philips, in the 
character of pastoral poet; and in the same character, 
but stationed at the end of the volume, and thus 
covered by his bucolic leader, as a soldier to the rear 
by the file in advance, appeared Pope; so that he 
might win a little public notice, without too much 
seeming to challenge it. ‘This half-clandestine emer- 
sion upon the stage of authorship, and his furtive 
position, are both mentioned by Pope as accidents, but 
as accidents in which he rejoiced, and not improbably 
accidents which Tonson had arranged with a view to 
his satisfaction. 

It must appear strange that Pope at twenty-one 
should choose to come forward for the first time with a 
work composed at sixteen. A difference of five years 
at that stage of life is of more effect than of twenty at 
a later; and his own expanding judgment could hardly 
fail to inform him, that his Pastorals were by far the 
worst of his works. In reality, let us not deny, that 
had Pope never written any thing else, his name would 
not have been known as a name even of promise, but 
would probably have been redeemed from oblivion by 


124 POPE. 


some satirist or writer of a Dunciad. Were a man to 
meet with such a nondescript monster as the following, 
viz., “ Love out of Mount Aitna by Whirlwind,” he 
would suppose himself reading the Racing Calendar. 
Yet this hybrid creature is one of the many zoological 
monsters to whom the Pastorals introduce us : 
“TI know thee, love! on foreign mountains born, 
Wolves gave thee suck, and savage tigers fed. 


Thou wert from A<tna’s burning entrails torn, 
Got by fierce whirlwinds, and in thunder born.” 


But the very names ‘“ Damon” and ‘ Strephon,” 
‘¢ Phillis” and ‘* Delia,’ are rank with childishness. 
Arcadian life is, at the best, a feeble conception, and 
rests upon the false principle of crowding together all 
the luscious sweets of rural life, undignified by the 
danger which attends pastoral life in our climate, and 
unrelieved by shades, either moral or physical. And 
the Arcadia of Pope’s age was the spurious Arcadia of — 
the opera theatre, and, what is worse, of the French 
opera. 

The hostilities which followed between these rival 
wooers of the pastoral muse are well known. Pope, 
irritated at what he conceived the partiality shown to 
Philips in the Guardian, pursued the review ironically ; 
and, whilst affecting to load his antagonist with praises, 
draws into pointed ‘relief some of his most flagrant 
faults. The result, however, we cannot believe. That 
all the wits, except Addison, were duped by the irony, 
is quite impossible. Could any man of sense mistake 
for praise the remark, that Philips had imitated * every 
line of Strada;” that he had introduced wolves into 
England, and proved himself the first of gardeners by 


POPE. 125 


making his flowers “ blow all in the same season.” 
Or, suppose those passages unnoticed, could the broad 
sneer escape him, where Pope taxes the other writer 
(viz., himself) with having deviated “into downright 
poetry ;” or the outrageous ridicule of Philip’s style, 
as setting up for the ideal type of the pastoral SIAR 
the quotation from Gay, beginning, 


“ Rager, go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun 
Will quite bego before ch’ ’avs half a don!” 


Philips is said to have resented this treatment by 
threats of personal chastisement to Pope, and even 
hanging up a rod at Button’s coffee-house. We may 
be certain that Philips never disgraced himself by such 
ignoble conduct. If the public indeed were universally 
duped by the paper, what motive had Philips for re- 
sentment? Or, in any case, what plea had he for 
attacking Pope, who had not come forward as the 
author of the essay? But, from Pope’s confidential 
account of the matter, we know that Philips saw him 
daily, and never offered him ‘any indecorum ;” 
though, for some cause or other, Pope pursued Philips 
with virulence through life. 

In the year 1711, Pope published his Essay on 
Criticism, which some people have very unreasonably 
fancied his best performance; and in the same year 
his Rape of the Lock, the most exquisite monument 
of playful fancy that universal literature offers. It 
wanted, however, as yet, the principle of its vitality, 
im wanting the machinery of sylphs and gnomes, with 
which addition it was first published in 1714. 

In the year 1712, Pope appeared again before the 


126 POPE. 


public as the author of the Temple of Fame, and the 
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. Much 
speculation has arisen on the question concerning the 
name of this lady, and the more interesting question 
concerning the nature of the persecutions and mis- 
fortunes which she suffered. Pope appears purposely 
to decline answering the questions of his friends upon 
that point; at least the questions have reached us, and 
the answers have not. Joseph Warton supposed him- 
self to have ascertained four facts about her: that her 
name was Wainsbury; that she was deformed in 
person; that she retired into a convent from some 
circumstances connected with an attachment to a 
young man of inferior rank ; and that she killed her- 
self, not by a sword, as the poet insinuates, but by a 
halter. As to the latter statement, it may very possi- 
bly be true; such a change would be a very slight 
exercise of the poet’s privileges. As to the rest, there 
are scarcely grounds enough for an opinion. Pope 
certainly speaks of her under the name of Mrs. (2. e. 
Miss) W , which at least argues a poetical exag- 
geration in describing her as a being “ that once had 
titles, honor, wealth, and fame ;” and he may as much 
have exaggerated her pretensions to beauty: It is 
indeed noticeable, that he speaks simply of her decent 
limbs, which, in any English use of the word, does not 
imply much enthusiasm of praise. She appears to 
have been the niece of a Lady A ; and Mr. 
Craggs,'afterwards secretary of state, wrote to Lady 
A on her behalf, and otherwise took an interest in 
her fate. As to her being a relative of the Duke of 
Buckingham’s, that rests upon a mere conjectural 


POPE. 127 


interpretation applied to a letter of that nobleman’s. 
But all things about this unhappy lady are as yet 
enveloped in mystery. And not the least part of the 
mystery is a letter of Pope’s to a Mr. C , bearing 
date 1732, that is, just twenty years after the publica- 
tion of the poem, in which Pope, in a manly tone, 
justifies himself for his estrangement, and presses 
against his unknown correspondent the very blame 
which he had applied generally to the kinsman of the 
poor victim in 1712. Now, unless there is some 
mistake in the date, how are we to explain this gentle- 
man’s long lethargy, and his sudden sensibility to 
Pope’s anathema, with which the world had resounded 
for twenty years? 

Pope had now established his reputation with the 
public as the legitimate successor and heir to the 
poetical supremacy of Dryden. His Rape of the 
Lock was unrivalled in ancient or modern literature, 
and the time had now arrived when, instead of seeking 
to extend his fame, he might count upon a_ pretty 
general support in applying what he had already 
established to the promotion of his own interest. Ac- 
cordingly, in the autumn of 1713, he formed a final 
resolution of undertaking a new translation of the 
Iliad. It must be observed, that already in 1709, 
concurrently with his Pastorals, he had _ published 
specimens of such a translation; and these had been 
communicated to his friends some time before. In 
particular, Sir William Trumbull, on the 9th of April, 
1708, urged upon Pope a complete translation of both 
Iliad and Odyssey. Defective skill in the Greek 
language, exaggeration of the difficulties, and the 


128 POPE. 


timidity of a writer as yet unknown, and not quite 
twenty years old, restrained Pope for five years and 
more. What he had practised as a sort of bravura, 
for a single effort of display, he recoiled from as a 
daily task to be pursued through much toil, and a con- 
siderable section of his life. However, he dallied with 
the purpose, starting difficulties in the temper of one 
who wishes to hear them undervalued; until at length 
Sir Richard Steele determined him to the undertaking, 
a fact overlooked by the biographers, but which is 
ascertained by Ayre’s account of that interview be- 
tween Pope and Addison, probably in 1716, which 
sealed the rupture between them. In the autumn of 
1713, he made his design known amongst his friends. 
Accordingly, on the 21st of October, we have Lord 
Lansdown’s letter, expressing his great pleasure at the 
communication; on the 26th, we have Addison’s letter 
encouraging him to the task ; and in November of the 
same year occurs the amusing scene so graphically 
described by Bishop Kennet, when Dean Swift pre- 
sided in the conversation, and, amongst other indica- 
tions of his conscious authority, *‘ instructed a young 
nobleman, that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, 
who had degun a translation of Homer into English 
verse, for which he must have them all subscribe ; 
for,” says he, “the author shall not begin to print 
until I have a thousand guineas for him.” 

If this were the extent of what Swift anticipated 
from the work, he fell miserably below the result. 
But, perhaps, he spoke only of a cautionary arrha or 
earnest. As this was unquestionably the greatest 
literary labor, as to profit, ever executed, not excepting 


POPE. 129 


the most lucrative of Sir Walter Scott’s, if due allow- 
ance be made for the altered value of money, and if 
we consider the Odyssey as forming part of the labor, 
it may be right to state the particulars of Pope’s con- 
tract with Lintot. 

The number of subscribers to the Iliad was 575, and 
the number of copies subscribed for was 654. The 
work was to be printed in six quarto volumes; and the 
subscription was a guinea a volume. Consequently by 
the subscription Pope obtained six times 654 guineas, 
or £4218. 6s., (for the guinea then passed for 21s. 
6d.) ; and for the copyright of each volume Lintot 
offered £200, consequently £1200 for the whole six ; 
so that from the Iliad the profit exactly amounted to 
£5310. 16s. Of the Odyssey, 574 copies were sub- 
scribed for. It was to be printed in five quarto 
volumes, and the subscription was a guinea a volume. 
Consequently by the subscription Pope obtained five 
times 574 guineas, or £3085. 5s.; and for the copy- 
right Lintot offered £600. ‘The total sum received, 
therefore, by Pope, on account of the Odyssey, was 
£3685. 5s. But in this instance he had two coadju- 
tors, Broome and Fenton; between them they trans- 
lated twelve books, leaving twelve to Pope. The notes 
also were compiled by Broome ; but the Postscript to the 
notes was written by Pope. Fenton received £300, 
Broome £500. Such at least is Warton’s account, and 
more probable than that of Ruffhead, who not only 
varies the proportions, but increases the whole sum 
given to the assistants by £100. Thus far we had 
followed the guidance of mere probabilities, as they lie 
upon the face of the transaction. But we have since 

9 


130 POPE. 


detected a written statement of Pope’s, unaccountably 
overlooked by the biographers, and serving of itself to 
show how negligently they have read the works of their 
illustrious subject. The statement is entitled to the 
fullest attention and confidence, not being a hasty or 
casual notice of the transaction, but pointedly shaped 
to meet a calumnious rumor against Pope in his char- . 
acter of paymaster; as if he who had found so much 
liberality from publishers in his own person, were 
niggardly or unjust as soon as he assumed those rela- 
tions to others. Broome, it was alleged, had expressed 
himself dissatisfied with Pope’s remuneration. Per- 
haps he had. For he would be likely to frame his 
estimate for his own services from the scale of Pope’s 
reputed gains; and those gains would, at any rate, be 
enormously exaggerated, as uniformly happens where 
there is a basis of the marvellous to begin with. And, 
secondly, it would be natural enough to assume the 
previous result from the Iliad as a fair standard for 
computation ; but in this, as we know, all parties found 
themselves disappointed, and Broome had the less 
right to murmur at this, since the arrangement with 
himself as chief journeyman in the job was one main 
cause of the disappointment. There was also another 
reason why Broome should be less satisfied than Fen- 
ton. Verse for verse, any one thousand lines of a 
translation so purely mechanical might stand against 
any other thousand; and so far the equation of claims 
was easy. A book-keeper, with a pen behind his ear, 
and Cocker’s Golden Rule open before him, could do 
full justice to Mr. Broome as a poet every Saturday 
night. But Broome had a separate account current for 


POPE. 131 


pure prose against Pope. One he had in conjunction 
with Fenton for verses delivered on the premises at so 
much per hundred, on which there could be no demur, 
except as to the allowance for tare and tret as a 
discount in favor of Pope. But the prose account, 
the account for notes, requiring very various degrees 
of reading and research, allowed of no such easy 
equation. There it was, we conceive, that Broome’s 
discontent arose. Pope, however, declares, that he 
had given him £500, thus confirming the proportions 
of Warton against Ruffhead, (that is, in effect, War- 
burton,) and some other advantages which were not in 
money, nor deductions at all from his own money 
profits, but which may have been worth so much 
money to Broome, as to give some colorable truth to 
Ruffhead’s allegation of an additional £100. Jn direct 
money, it remains certain that Fenton had three, and 
Broome five hundred pounds. It follows, therefore, 
that for the Iliad and Odyssey jointly he received a 
sum of £8996. Is., and paid for assistance £800, 
which leaves to himself a clear sum of £8196. Is. 
And, in fact, his profits ought to be calculated without 
deduction, since it was his own choice, from indolence, 
to purchase assistance. 

The Iliad was commenced about October, 1713. In 
the summer of the following year he was so far ad- 
vanced as to begin making arrangements with Lintot 
for the printing ; and the first two books, in manu- 
script, were put into the hands of Lord Halifax. In 
June, 1715, between the 10th and 28th, the subscribers 
received their copies of the first volume ; and in July 
Lintot began to publish that volume generally. Some 


132 POPE. 


readers will inquire, who paid for the printing and 
paper, &c.? All this expense fell upon Lintot, for 
whom Pope was superfluously anxious. ‘The sagacious 
bookseller understood what he was about; and, when a 
pirated edition was published in Holland, he counter- 
acted the injury by printing a cheap edition, of which 
7500 copies were sold in a few weeks; an extraordi- 
nary proof of the extended interest in literature. ‘The 
second, third, and fourth volumes of the lliad, each 
containing, like the first, four books, were published 
successively in 1716, 1717, 1718; and in 1720, Pope 
completed the work by publishing the fifth volume, 
containing five books, and the sixth, containing the 
last three, with the requisite supplementary apparatus. 

The Odyssey was commenced in 1723, (not 1722, 
as Mr. Roscoe virtually asserts at p. 259,) and the | 
publication of it was finished in 1725. The sale, 
however, was much inferior to that of the Iliad; for 
which more reasons than one might be assigned. But 
there can be no doubt that Pope himself depreciated 
the work, by his undignified arrangements for working 
by subordinate hands. Such a process may answer in 
sculpture, because there a quantity of rough-hewing 
occurs, which can no more be improved by committing 
it to a Phidias, than a common shop-bill could be 
improved in its arithmetic by Sir Isaac Newton. But 
in literature such arrangements are degrading; and, 
above all, in a work which was but too much exposed 
already to the presumption of being a mere effort of 
mechanic skill, or (as Curll said to the House of Lords) 
‘©q knack ;”” it was deliberately helping forward that 
idea to let off parts of the labor. Only think of 


POPE. 133 


Milton letting off by contract to the lowest offer, and to 
be delivered by such a day, (for which good security 
to be found,) six books of Paradise Lost. It is true, 
the great dramatic authors were often collaborateurs, 
but their case was essentially different. The loss, 
however, fell not upon Pope, but upon Lintot, who, on 
this occasion, was out of temper, and talked rather 
broadly of prosecution. But that was out of the ques- 
tion. Pope had acted indiscreetly, but nothing could 
be alleged against his honor; for he had expressly 
warned the public, that he did not, as in the other case, 
profess to translate, but to undertake! a translation of 
the Odyssey. Lintot, however, was no loser abso- 
lutely, though he might be so in relation to his expec- 
tations; on the contrary, he grew rich, bought land, 
and became sheriff of the county in which his estates 
lay. 

We have pursued the Homeric labors uninterrupted- 
ly from their commencement in 1713, till their final 
termination in 1725, a period of twelve years or 
nearly ; because this was the task to which Pope owed 
the dignity, if not the comforts, of his life, since it was 
this which enabled him to decline a pension from all 
administrations, and even from his friend Craggs, the 
secretary, to decline the express offer of £300 per 
annum. Indeed Pope is always proud to own his 
obligations to Homer. In the interval, however, be- 
tween the Iliad and the Odyssey, Pope listened to 
proposals made by Jacob Tonson, that he should revise 
an edition of Shakspeare. For this, which was in fact 
the first attempt at establishing the text of the mighty 
poet, Pope obtained but little money, and still less 


134 POPE. 


reputation. He received, according to tradition, only 
£217. 12s. for his trouble of collation, which must 
have been considerable, and some other trifling edito- 
rial: labor. And the opinion of all judges, from the 
first so unfavorable as to have depreciated the money- 
value of the book enormously, perhaps from a prepos- 
session of the public mind against the fitness of Pope 
for executing the dull labors of revision, has ever since 
pronounced this work the very worst edition in exist- 
ence. For the edition we have little to plead; but for — 
the editor it is but just to make three apologies. In 
the first place, he wrote a brilliant preface, which, 
although (like other works of the same class) too much 
occupied in displaying his own ability, and too often, 
for the sake of an effective antithesis, doing deep 
injustice to Shakspeare, yet undoubtedly, as a whole, 
extended his fame, by giving the sanction and coun- 
tersign of a great wit to the national admiration. 
Secondly, as Dr. Johnson admits, Pope’s failure pointed 
out the right road to his successors. Thirdly, even in 
this failure it is but fair to say, that in a graduated 
scale of merit, as distributed amongst the long succes- 
sion of editors through that century, Pope holds a rank 
proportionable to his age. For the year 1720, he is no 
otherwise below Theobald, Hanmer, Capell, Warbur- 
ton, or even Johnson, than as they are successively 
below each other, and all of them as to accuracy 
below Steevens, as he again was below Malone and 
Read. 

The gains from Shakspeare would hardly counter- 
balance the loss which Pope sustained this year from 


the South Sea Bubble. One thing, by the way, is still 


POPE. 135 


unaccountably neglected by writers on this question. 
How it was that the great Mississippi Bubble, during 
the Orleans regency in Paris, should have happened to 
coincide with that of London. If this were accident, 
how marvellous that the same insanity should possess 
the two great capitals of Christendom in the same 
year? If, again, it were not accident, but due to some 
common cause, why is not that cause explained ? 
Pope to his nearest friends never stated the amount of 
his loss. The biographers report that at one time his 
stock was worth from twenty to thirty thousand pounds. 
But that is quite impossible. It is true, that as the 
stock rose at one time a thousand per cent.} this would 
not imply on Pope’s part an original purchase beyond 
twenty-five hundred pounds or thereabouts. But Pope 
-has furnished an argument against that, which we shall 
improve. He quotes, more than once, as applicable to 
his own case, the old proverbial riddle of Hesiod, 
masov iurcv mavtos, the half is more than the whole. 
What did he mean by that?) We understand it thus; 
That between the selling and buying, the variations 
had been such as to sink his shares to one half of ‘the 
price they had once reached, but, even at that depreci- 
ation, to leave him richer on selling out than he had 
been at first. But the half of £25,000 would be a far 
larger sum than Pope could have ventured to risk upon 
a fund confessedly liable to daily fluctuation. £3000 
would be the utmost he could risk; in which case the 
half of £25,009 would have left him so very much 
richer, that he would have proclaimed his good fortune 
as an evidence of his skill and prudence. Yet, on the 
contrary, he wished his friends to understand at times 


136 POPE. 


that he had lost. But his friends forgot to ask one 
important question: Was the word loss to be under- 
stood in relation to the imaginary and nominal wealth 
which he once possessed, or in relation to the absolute 
sum invested in the South Sea fund? The truth is, 
Pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little 
finessing, which is the chief foible in his character. 
His object was, that, according to circumstances, he 
might vindicate his own freedom from the common 
mania, in case his enemies should take that handle for 
attacking him ; or might have it in his power to plead 
poverty, and to account for it, in case he should ever 
accept that pension which had been so often tendered 
but never sternly rejected. 

In 1723 Pope lost one of his dearest friends, Bishop 
Atterbury, by banishment; a sentence most justly: 
incurred, and mercifully mitigated by the hostile Whig 
government. On the bishop’s trial a circumstance 
occurred to Pope which flagrantly corroborated his own 
belief in his natural disqualification for public life. 
He was summoned as an evidence on his friend’s 
behalf. He had but a dozen words to say, simply 
explaining the general tenor of his lordship’s behavior 
at Bromley, and yet, under this trivial task, though 
supported by the enthusiasm of his friendship, he 
broke down. Lord Bolingbroke, returning from exile, 
met the bishop at the sea-side; upon which it was 
wittily remarked that they were ‘“ exchanged.” Lord 
Bolingbroke supplied to Pope the place, or perhaps 
more than supplied the place, of the friend he had 
lost; for Bolingbroke was a free-thinker, and so far 
more entertaining to Pope, even whilst partially dis- 


POPE. 137 


senting, than Atterbury, whose clerical profession laid 
him under restraints of decorum, and latterly, there is 
reason to think, of conscience. 

In 1725, on closing the Odyssey, Pope announces 
his intention to Swift of quitting the labors of a trans- 
lator, and thenceforwards applying himself to original 
composition. This resolution led to the Essay on Man, 
which appeared soon afterwards; and, with the excep- 
tion of two labors, which occupied Pope in the interval 
between 1726 and 1729, the rest of his life may 
properly be described as dedicated to the further exten- 
sion of that Essay. The two works which he inter- 
posed were a collection of the fugitive papers, whether 
prose or verse, which he and Dean Swift had scattered 
amongst their friends at different periods of life. The 
avowed motive for this publication, and, in fact, the 
secret motive, as disclosed in Pope’s confidential 
letters, was to make it impossible thenceforwards for 
piratical publishers like Curll. Both Pope and Swift 
dreaded the malice of Curll in case they should die 
before him. It was one of Curll’s regular artifices to 
publish a heap of trash on the death of any eminent 
man, under the title of his Remains; and in allusion 
to that practice, it was that Arbuthnot most wittily 
called Curll “‘ one of the new terrors of death.” By 
publishing all, Pope would have disarmed Curll before- 
hand ; and that was in fact the purpose ; and that plea 
only could be offered by two grave authors, one forty, 
the other sixty years old, for reprinting jeux d’esprit 
that never had any other apology than the youth of 
their authors. Yet, strange to say, after all, some 
were omitted; and the omission of one opened the 


138 POPE. 


door to Curll as well as that of a score. Let Curll 
have once inserted the narrow end of the wedge, he 
would soon have driven it home. 

This Miscellany, however, in three volumes, (pub- 
lished in 1727, but afterwards increased by a fourth in 
1732,) though in itself a trifling work, had one vast 
consequence. It drew after it swarms of libels and 
lampoons, levelled almost exclusively at Pope, although 
the cipher of the joint authors stood entwined upon the 
title-page. These libels in their turn produced a 
second reaction; and, by stimulating Pope to effectual 
anger, eventually drew forth, for the everlasting admi- 
ration of posterity, the very greatest of Pope’s works; 
a monument of satirical power the greatest which man 
has produced, not excepting the MacFleckno of Dry- 
den, namely, the immortal Dunciad. 

In October of the year 1727, this poem, in its 
original form, was completed. Many editions, not 
spurious altogether, nor surreptitious, but with some 
connivance, not yet explained, from Pope, were printed 
in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto and 
acknowledged edition was published in London early 
in “1728-9,” as the editors choose to write it, that 
is, (without perplexing the reader,) in 1729. On 
March 12 of which year it was presented by the 
prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king and 
queen at St. James’s. 

Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the 
wound, and afterwards to languish away, Pope felt so 
greatly exhausted by the efforts connected with the 
Dunciad, (which are far greater, in fact, than all his 
Homeric labors put together,) that he prepared his 


POPE. 139 


friends to expect for the future only an indolent com- 
panion and a hermit. Events rapidly succeeded which 
tended to strengthen the impression he had conceived 
of his own decay, and certainly to increase his disgust 
with the world. In 1732 died his friend Atterbury ; 
and on December the 7th of the same year Gay, the 
most unpretending of all the wits whom he knew, and 
the one with whom he had at one time been domesti- 
eated, expired, after an illness of three days, which 
Dr. Arbuthnot declares to have been ‘ the most pre- 
cipitate’’ he ever knew. But in fact Gay had long 
been decaying, from the ignoble vice of too much and 
too luxurious eating. Six months after this loss, which 
greatly affected Pope, came the last deadly wound 
which this life could inflict, in the death of his mother. 
She had for some time been in her dotage, and recog- 
nized no face but that of her son, so that her death 
was not unexpected; but that circumstance did not 
soften the blow of separation to Pope. She died on 
the 7th of June, 1733, being then ninety-three years 
old. Three days after, writing to Richardson the 
painter, for the purpose of urging him to come down 
and take her portrait before the coffin was closed, he 
says, ‘‘I thank God, her death was as easy as her life 
was innocent ; and as it cost her not a -groan, nor even 
a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an 
expression of tranquillity,” that ‘it would afford the 
finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew. 
Adieu, may you die as happily.” The funeral took 
place on the 11th; Pope then quitted the house, unable 
to support the silence of her chamber, and did not 
return for months, nor in fact ever reconciled himself 
to the sight of her vacant apartment. 


140 POPE. 


Swift also he had virtually lost for ever. In April, 
1727, this unhappy man had visited Pope for the last 
time. During this visit occurred the death of George I. 
Great expectations arose from that event amongst the 
Tories, in which, of course, Swift shared. It was 
reckoned upon as a thing of course that Walpole 
would be dismissed. But this bright gleam of hope 
proved as treacherous as all before; and the anguish 
of this final disappointment perhaps it was which 
brought on a violent attack of Swift’s constitutional 
malady. On the last of August he quitted Pope’s 
house abruptly, concealed himself in London, and 
finally quitted it, as stealthily as he had before quitted 
Twickenham, for Ireland, never more to return. He 
left a most affectionate letter for Pope ; but his afflic- 
tion, and his gloomy anticipations of insanity, were 
too oppressive to allow of his seeking a personal inter- 
view. 

Pope might now describe himself pretty nearly as 
ultimus suorum; and if he would have friends in 
future, he must seek them, as he complains bitterly, 
almost amongst strangers and another generation. 
This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony 
which too ‘much disfigures his writings henceforward. 
Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in 
satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in ~ 
the midst of personal invective ; or in poems directly 
philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the 
bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics. 
His Essay on Man was but one link in a general 
course which he had projected of moral philosophy, 
here and there pursuing his themes into the fields of 


POPE. 141 


metaphysics, but no farther in either field of morals or 
metaphysics than he could make compatible with a 
poetical treatment. ‘These works, however, naturally 
entangled him in feuds of various complexions with 
people of very various pretensions ; and to admirers of 
Pope so fervent as we profess ourselves, it is painful to 
acknowledge that the dignity of his latter years, and 
the becoming tranquillity of increasing age, are sadly 
disturbed by the petulance and the tone of irritation 
which, alike to those in the wrong and in the right, 
inevitably besiege all personal disputes. He was 
agitated, besides, by a piratical publication of his cor- 
respondence. ‘This emanated of course from the den 
of Curll, the universal robber and “ blatant beast” of 
those days; and, besides the injury offered to his 
feelings by exposing some youthful sallies which he 
wished to have suppressed, it drew upon him a far 
more disgraceful imputation, most assuredly unfounded, 
but accredited by Dr. Johnson, and consequently in full 
currency to this day, of having acted collusively with 
Curll, or at least through Curll, for the publication of 
what he wished the world to see, but could not else 
have devised any decent pretext for exhibiting. The 
disturbance of his mind on this occasion led to a cir- 
cular request, dispersed amongst his friends, that they 
would return his letters. All complied except Swift. 
He only delayed, and in fact shuffled. But it is easy 
to read in his evasions, and Pope, in spite of his vexa- 
tion, read the same tale, viz., that, in consequence of 
his recurring attacks and increasing misery, he was 
himself the victim of artifices amongst those who 


surrounded him. What Pope apprehended happened. 


142 POPE. 


The letters were all published in Dublin and in Lon- 
don, the originals being then only returned when they 
had done their work of exposure. 

Such a tenor of life, so constantly fretted by petty 
wrongs, or by leaden insults, to which only the celeb-— 
rity of their object lent force or wings, allowed little 
opportunity to Pope for recalling his powers from 
angry themes, and converging them upon others of 
more catholic philosophy. To the last he continued to 
conceal vipers beneath his flowers; or rather, speaking 
proportionately to the case, he continued to sheath 
amongst the gleaming but innocuous lightnings of his 
departing splendors, the thunderbolts which blasted for 
ever. His last appearance was his greatest. In 1742 
he published the fourth book of the Dunciad ; to which 
it has with much reason been objected, that it stands in 
no obvious relation to the other three, but which, taken 
as a separate whole, is by far the most brilliant and the 
weightiest of his works. Pope was aware of the 
hiatus between this last book and the rest, on which 
account he sometimes called it the greater Dunciad ; 
and it would have been easy for him, with a shallow 
Warburtonian ingenuity, to invent links that might 
have satisfied a mere verbal sense of connection. But 
he disdained this puerile expedient. The fact was, 
and could not be disguised from any penetrating eye, 
that the poem was not a pursuit of the former subjects ; 
it had arisen spontaneously at various times, by looking 
at the same general theme of dulness (which, in 
Pope’s sense, includes all aberrations of the intellect, 
nay, even any defective equilibrium amongst the 
faculties) under a different angle of observation, and 


POPE. 143 


from a different centre. In this closing book, not only 
bad authors, as in the other three, but all abuses of 
science or antiquarian knowledge, or connoisseurship 
in the arts, are attacked. Virtuosi, medalists, butterfly- 
hunters, florists, erring metaphysicians, &c., are all 
pierced through and through. as with the shafts of 
Apollo. But the imperfect plan of the work as to its 
internal economy, no less than its exterior relations, is 
evident in many places; and in particular the whole 
catastrophe of the poem, if it can be so called, is 
linked to the rest by a most insufficient incident. To 
give a closing grandeur to his work, Pope had con- 
ceived the idea of representing the earth as lying 
universally under the incubation of one mighty spirit 
of dulness; a sort of millennium, as we may call it, 
for ignorance, error, and stupidity. This would take 
leave of the reader with effect ; but how was it to be 
introduced ? at what era? under what exciting cause ? 
As to the eras, Pope could not settle that; unless it 
were a future era, the description of it could not be 
delivered as a prophecy ; and, not being prophetic, it 
would want much of its grandeur. Yet, as a part of 
futurity, how is it connected with our present times ? 
Do they and their pursuits lead to it as a possibility, or 
as a contingency upon certain habits which we have it 
in our power to eradicate, (in which case this vision of 
dulness has a practical warning,) or is it a mere neces- 
sity, one amongst the many changes attached to the 
cycles of human destiny, or which chance brings 
round with the revolutions of its wheel? All this 
Pope could not determine ; but the exciting cause he 
has determined, and it is preposterously below the 


* 


144 POPE. 


effect. The goddess of dulness yawns; and her 
yawn, which, after all, should rather express the fact 
and state of universal dulness than its cause, produces 
a change over all nations tantamount to a long eclipse, 
Meantime, with all its defects of plan, the poem, as to 
execution, is superior to all which Pope has done ; the 
composition is much superior to that of the Essay on 
Man, and more profoundly poetic. The parodies 
drawn from Milton, as also in the former books, have a 
beauty and effect which cannot be expressed ; and, ifa 
young lady wished to cull for her album a passage 
from all Pope’s writings, which, without a trace of 
irritation or acrimony, should yet present an exquisite 
gem of independent beauty, she could not find another 
passage equal to the little story of the florist and the 
butterfly-hunter. They plead their cause separately 
before the throne of dulness ; the florist telling how he 
had reared a superb carnation, which, in honor of the 
queen, he called Caroline, when his enemy, pursuing a 
butterfly which settled on the carnation, in securing his 
own object, had destroyed that of the plaintiff. The 
defendant replies with equal beauty ; and it may cer- 
tainly be affirmed, that, for brilliancy of coloring and 
the art of poetical narration, the tale is not surpassed 
by any in the language. 

This was the last effort of Pope worthy of separate 
notice. He was now decaying rapidly, and sensible of 
his own decay. His complaint was a dropsy of the 
chest, and he knew it to be incurable. Under these 
circumstances, his behavior was admirably philoso- 
phical. He employed himself in revising and burnish- 
ing all his later works, as those upon which he wisely 


POPE. 145 


relied for his reputation with future generations. In 
this task he was assisted by Dr. Warburton, a new 
literary friend, who had introduced himself to the 
favorable notice of Pope about four years before, by a 
defence of the Essay on Man, which Crousaz had 
attacked, but in general indirectly and ineffectually, by 
attacking it through the blunders of a very faulty 
translation. This poem, however, still labors, to 
religious readers, under two capital defects. If man, 
according to Pope, is now so admirably placed in the 
universal system of things, that evil only could result 
from any change, then it seems to follow, either that 
a fall of man is inadmissible; or at least, that, by 
placing him in his true centre, it had been a blessing 
universally. The other objection lies in this, that if 
all is right already, and in this earthly station, then 
one argument for a future state, as the scene in 
which evil is to be redressed, seems weakened or 
undermined. 

As the weakness of Pope increased, his nearest 
friends, Lord Bolingbroke, and a few others, gathered 
around him. The last scenes were passed almost with 
ease and tranquillity. He dined in company two days 
before he died; and on the very day preceding his 
death he took an airing on Blackheath. A few morn- 
ings before he died, he was found very early in his 
library writing on the immortality of the soul. This 
was an effort of delirium; and he suffered otherwise 
from this affection of the brain, and from inability to 
think in his closing hours. But his humanity and good- 
ness, it was remarked, had survived his intellectual 


faculties. He died on the 30th of May, 1744; and so 
10 


146 POPE. 


quietly, that the attendants could not distinguish the 
exact moment of his dissolution. 

We had prepared an account of Pope’s quarrels, in 
which we had shown that, generally, he was not the 
aggressor ; and often was atrociously ill used before 
he retorted. ‘This service to Pope’s memory we had 
judged important, because it is upon these quarrels 
chiefly that the erroneous opinion has built itself of 
Pope’s fretfulness and irritability. And this unamiable 
feature of his nature, together with a proneness to 
petty manceuvring, are the main foibles that malice has 
been able to charge upon Pope’s moral character, 
Yet, with no better foundation for their malignity than 
these doubtful propensities, of which the first perhaps 
was a constitutional defect, a defect of his tempera- 
ment rather than his will, and the second has been 
much exaggerated, many writers have taken upon 
themselves to treat Pope as a man, if not absolutely 
unprincipled and without moral sensibility, yet*as 
mean, little-minded, indirect, splenetic, vindictive, and 
morose. Now the difference between ourselves and 
these writers is fundamental. They fancy that in 
Pope’s character a basis of ignoble qualities was here 
and there slightly relieved by a few shining spots; we, 
on the contrary, believe that in Pope lay a disposition 
radically noble and generous, clouded and_ over- 
shadowed by superficial foibles, or, to adopt the dis- 
tinction of Shakspeare, they see nothing but “ dust a 
little gilt,” and we ‘gold a little dusted.” A very 
rapid glance we will throw over the general outline of 
his character. 

As a friend, it is noticed emphatically by Martha 


POPE. 147 


Blount and other contemporaries, who must have had 
the best means of judging, that no man was so warm- 
hearted, or so much sacrificed himself for others, as 
Pope ; and in fact many of his quarrels grew out of 
this trait in his character. For once that he levelled 
his spear in his own quarrel, at least twice he did so 
on behalf of his insulted parents or his friends. Pope 
was also noticeable for the duration of his friend- 
ships ;!1 some dropped him, but he never any through- 
out his life. And let it be remembered, that amongst 
Pope’s friends were the men of most eminent talents 
in those days; so that envy at least, or jealousy of 
rival power, was assuredly no foible of his. In that 
respect how different from Addison, whose petty 
manceuyring against Pope proceeded entirely from 
malignant jealousy. That Addison was more in the 
wrong even than has generally been supposed, and 
Pope more thoroughly innocent as well as more gener- 
ous, we have the means at a proper opportunity of 
showing decisively. As a son, we need not insist on 
Pope’s preéminent goodness. Dean Swift, who had 
lived for months together at Twickenham, declares that 
he had not only never witnessed, but had never heard 
of anything like it. As a Christian, Pope appears in a 
truly estimable light. He found himself a Roman 
Catholic by accident of birth ; so was his mother; but 
his father was so upon personal conviction and conver- 
sion, yet not without extensive study of the questions 
at issue. It would have laid open the road to prefer- 
ment, and preferment was otherwise abundantly before 
him, if Pope would have gone over to the Protestant 
faith. And in his conscience he found no obstacle to 


148 POPE. 


that change; he was a philosophical Christian, intol- 
erant of nothing but intolerance, a bigot only against 
bigots. But he remained true to his baptismal profes- 
sion, partly on a general principle of honor in adhering 
to a distressed and dishonored party, but chiefly out of 
reverence and affection to his mother. In his relation 
to women, Pope was amiable and gentlemanly; and 
accordingly was the object of affectionate regard and 
admiration to many of the most accomplished in that 
sex. This we mention especially because we would 
wish to express our full assent to the manly scorn with 
which Mr. Roscoe repels the libellous insinuations 
against Pope and Miss Martha Blount. A more inno- 
cent connection we do not believe ever existed. As 
an author, Warburton has recorded that no man ever 
displayed more candor or more docility to criticisms 
offered in a friendly spirit. Finally, we sum up all in 
saying, that Pope retained to the last a true and diffu- 
sive benignity ; that this was the quality which sur- 
vived all others, notwithstanding the bitter trial which 
his benignity must have stood through life, and the 
excitement to a spiteful reaction of feeling which 
was continually pressed upon him by the scorn and 
insult which his deformity drew upon him from the 
unworthy. 

But the moral character of Pope is of secondary 
interest. We are concerned with it only as connected 
with his great intellectual power. ‘There are three 
errors which seem current upon this subject. Furst, 
that Pope drew his impulses from French literature ; 
secondly, that he was a poet of inferior rank ; thirdly, 
that his merit lies in superior “ correctness.” With 


POPE. 149 


respect to the first notion, it has prevailed by turns in 
every literature. One stage of society, in every 
nation, brings men of impassioned minds to the con- 
templation of manners, and of the social affections of 
man as exhibited in manners. With this propensity 
cooperates, no doubt, some degree of despondency 
when looking at the great models of the literature who 
have usually preoccupied the grander passions, and 
displayed their movements in the earlier periods of 
literature. Now it happens that the French, from an 
extraordinary defect in the higher qualities of passion, 
have attracted the notice of foreign nations chiefly to 
that field of their literature, in which the taste and 
the unimpassioned understanding preside. But in all 
nations such literature is a natural growth of the mind, 
and would arise equally if the French literature had 
never existed. The wits of Queen Anne’s reign, or 
even of Charles II.’s, were not French by their taste 
or their imitation. Butler and Dryden were surely not 
French ; and of Milton we need not speak ; as little- 
was Pope French, either by his institution or by his 
models. Boileau he certainly admired too much; and, 
for the sake of a poor parallelism with a passage about 
Greece in Horace, he has falsified history in the most 
ludicrous manner, without a shadow of countenance 
from facts, in order to make out that we, like the 
Romans, received laws of taste from those whom we 
had conquered. But these are insulated cases and 
accidents, not to insist on his known and most profound 
admiration, often expressed, for both Chaucer, and 
Shakspeare, and Milton. Secondly, that Pope is to be 
classed as an inferior poet, has arisen purely from a 


150 _ POPE. 


confusion between the departments of poetry which he 
cultivated and the merit of his culture. The first place 
must undoubtedly be given for ever, — it cannot be 
refused, — to the impassioned movements of the tragic, 
and to the majestic movements of the epic muse. We 
cannot alter the relations of things out of favor to an 
individual. But in his own department, whether higher 
or lower, that man is supreme who has not yet been 
surpassed ; and such a man is Pope. As to the final 
notion, first started by Walsh, and propagated by 
Warton, it is the most absurd of all the three ; it is not 
from superior correctness that Pope is esteemed more 
correct, but because the compass and sweep of his 
performances lies more within the range of ordinary 
judgments. Many questions that have been raised 
upon Milton or Shakspeare, questions relating to so 
subtile a subject as the flux and reflux of human 
passion, lie far above the region of ordinary capacities ; 
and the indeterminateness or even carelessness of the 
judgment is transferred by a common confusion to its 
objects. But waiving this, let us ask, what is meant by 
‘*‘ correctness? ’’ Correctness in what? In develop- 
ing the thought? In connecting it, or effecting the 
transitions? Inthe use of words? In the grammar? 
In the metre? Under every one of these limitations 
of the idea, we maintain that Pope is not distinguished 
by correctness; nay, that, as compared with Shak- 
speare, he is eminently incorrect. Produce us from 
any drama of Shakspeare one of those leading passa- 
ges that all men have by heart, and show us any 
eminent defect in the very sinews of the thought. It 
is impossible ; defects there may be, but they will 


POPE. 151 


always be found irrelevant to the main central thought, 
or to its expression. Now turn to Pope; the first 
striking passage which offers itself to our memory, is 
the famous character of Addison, ending thus : 


“ Who would not laugh, if such a man there be, 
Who but must weep if Atticus were he?” 


Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque 
assembly of noble and ignoble qualities. Very well ; 
but why then must we weep? Because this assem- 
blage is found actually existing in an eminent man of 
genius. Well, that isa good reason for weeping; we 
weep for the degradation of human nature. But then 
revolves the question, why must we laugh? Because, 
if the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient 
reason for weeping, so much we know from the very 
first. ‘The very first line says, ‘‘ Peace to all such. 
But were there one whose fires true genius kindles and 
fair fame inspires.” Thus falls to the ground the 
whole antithesis of this famous character. We are to 
change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden 
discovery that the character belonged to a man of 
genius; and this we had already known from the 
beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in 
Shakspeare. Again, take the Essay on Criticism. It 
is a collection of independent maxims, tied together 
into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural 
order or logical dependency ; generally so vague as to 
mean nothing. Like the general rules of justice, &c., 
in ethics, to which every man assents; but when the 
question comes about any practical case, is it just? 
The opinions fly asunder far as the poles. And, what 


152 POPE, 


is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no 
man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so 
often as in this very poem. Asa single instance, he 
proscribes monosyllabic lines; and in no English 
poem of any pretensions are there so many lines of 
that class as in this. We have counted above a score, 
and the last line of all is monosyllabic. 

Not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for 
qualities the very same as belong to his most dis- 
tinguished brethren, is Pope to be considered a great 
poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful description, 
pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. His character- 
istic difference is simply that he carried these powers 
into a different field, and moved chiefly amongst the 
social paths of men, and viewed their characters as 
operating through their manners. And our obligations 
to him arise chiefly on this ground, that having already, 
in the persons of earlier poets, carried off the palm in 
all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the 
majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence 
of the tragic drama, to Pope we owe it that we can 
now claim an equal preéminence in the sportive and 
aérial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse ; 
that in the Dunciad we possess a peculiar form of 
satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by 
any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile 
and her gloomiest scowl; that the grave good sense of 
the nation has here found its brightest mirror; and, 
finally, that through Pope the cycle of our poetry is 
perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we 
might claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or 
grace. 


NOTES. 


Nore 1. Page 95. 


Dr. Johnson, however, and Joseph Warton, for reasons not stated, 
have placed his birth on the 22d. To this statement, as opposed to 
that which comes from the personal friends of Pope, little attention 
is due. Ruffhead and Spence, upon such questions, must always be 
of higher authority than Johnson and Warton, and a fortiori than 
Bowles. But it ought not to be concealed, though hitherto unno- 
ticed by any person, that some doubt after all remains whether any 
of the biographers is right. An anonymous writer, contemporary 
with Pope, and evidently familiar with his personal history, declares 
that he was born on the 8th of June ; and he connects it with an event 
that, having a public and a partisan interest, (the birth of that 
Prince of Wales, who was known twenty-seven years afterwards as 
the Pretender,) would serve to check his own recollections, and give 
them a collateral voucher. It is true he wrote for an ill-natured 
purpose ; but no purpose whatever could have been promoted by 
falsifying this particular date. What is still more noticeable, how- 
ever, Pope himself puts a most emphatic negative upon all these 
statements. In a pathetic letter to a friend, when his attention 
could not have been wandering, for he is expressly insisting upon a 
sentiment which will find an echo in many a human heart, viz., that 
a birthday, though from habit usually celebrated as a festal day, too 
often is secretly a memorial of disappointment, and an anniversary 
of sorrowful meaning, he speaks of the very day on which he is then 
writing as his own birthday ; and indeed what else could give any 
propriety to the passage? Now the date of this letter is January 1, 


154 POPE. 


1733. Surely Pope knew his own birthday better than those who 
have adopted a random rumor without investigation. 

But, whilst we are upon this subject, we must caution the readers 
of Pope against too much reliance upon the chronological accuracy 
of his editors. All are scandalously careless ; and generally they 
are faithless. Many allusions are left unnoticed, which a very 
little research would have illustrated ; many facts are omitted, even 
yet recoverable, which are essential to the just appreciation of 
Pope’s satirical blows ; and dates are constantly misstated. Mr, 
Roscoe is the most careful of Pope’s editors ; but even he is often 
wrong. For instance, he has taken the trouble to write a note upon 
Pope’s humorous report to Lord Burlington of his Oxford journey 
on horseback with Lintot; and this note involves a sheer impossi- 
bility. The letter is undated, except as to the month; and Mr, 
Roscoe directs the reader to supply 1714 as the true date, which is a 
gross anachronism. For a ludicrous anecdote is there put into 
Lintot’s mouth, representing some angry critic, who had been turn- 
ing over Pope’s Homer, with frequent pshaws, as having been pro- 
pitiated, by Mr. Lintot’s dinner, into a gentler feeling towards Pope, 
and, finally, by the mere effect of good cheer, without an effort on 
the publisher’s part, as coming to a confession, that what he ate and 
what he had been reading were equally excellent. But in the year 
1714, no part of Pope’s Homer was printed; June, 1715, was the 
month in which even the subscribers first received the four earliest 
books of the Iliad ; and the public generally not until July. This 
we notice by way of specimen; in itself, or as an error of mere 
negligence, it would be of little importance ; but it is a case to 
which Mr. Roscoe has expressly applied his own conjectural skill, 
and solicited the attention of his reader. We may judge, therefore, 
of his accuracy in other cases which he did not think worthy of 
examination. 

There is another instance, presenting itself in every page, of 
ignorance concurring with laziness, on the part of all Pope’s editors, 
and with the effect not so properly of misleading as of perplexing 
the general reader. Until Lord Macclesfield’s bill for altering the 
style in the very middle of the eighteenth century, six years, there- 
fore, after the death of Pope, there was a custom, arising from the 
collision between the civil and ecclesiastical year, of dating the 
whole period that lies between December 3ist and March 25th, 
(both days exclusively,) as belonging indifferently to the past or the 
current year. This peculiarity had nothing to do with the old and 
new style, but was, we believe, redressed by the same act of Parlia- 


NOTES. 155 


ment. Now in Pope’s time it was absolutely necessary that a man 
should use this double date, because else he was liable to he seri- 
ously misunderstood. For instance, it was then always said that 
Charles I. had suffered on the 30th of January 1648; and why? 
Because, had the historian fixed the date to what it really was, 
1649, in that case all those (a very numerous class) who supposed 
the year 1649 to commence on Ladyday, or March 25, would have 
understood him to mean that this event happened in what we now 
call 1650, for not until 1650 was there any January which they would 
have acknowledged as belonging to 1649, since they added to the 
year 1648 all the days from January 1 to March 24. On the other 
hand, if he had said simply that Charles suffered in 1648, he would 
have been truly understood hy the class we have just mentioned ; 
but by another class, who began the year from the Ist of January, 
he would have been understood to mean what we now mean by the 
year 1648. There would have been a sheer difference, not of one, as 
the reader might think at first sight, hut of ¢wo entire years in the 
chronology of the two parties; which difference, and all possibility 
of doubt, is met and remedied by the fractional date 184 ; for that 
date says in effect it was 1648 to you who do not open the new year 
till Ladyday ; it was 1649 to you who open it from January 1. 
Thus much to explain the real sense of the case; and it follows 
from this explanation, that no part of the year ever can have the 
fractional or double date except the interval from January 1 to 
March 24 inclusively. And hence arises a practical inference, viz., 
that the very same reason, and no other, which formerly enjoined 
the use of the compound or fractional date, viz., the prevention of a 
capital ambiguity or dilemma, now enjoins its omission. For in our 
day, when the double opening of the year is abolished, what sense 
is there in perplexing a reader by using a fraction which offers him 
a choice without directing him how to choose? In fact, it is the 
denominator of the fraction, if one may so style the lower figure, 
which expresses to a modern eye the true year. Yet the editors of 
Pope, as well as many other writers, have confused their readers by 
this double date; and why? Simply because they were confused 
themselves. Many errors in literature of Jarge extent have arisen 
from this confusion. Thus it was said properly enough in the con- 
temporary accounts, for instance, in Lord Monmouth’s Memoirs, that 
Queen Elizabeth died on the last day of the year 1602, for she died 
on the 24th of March; and by a careful writer this event would 
have been dated as March 24, 892. But many writers, misled 
by the phrase above cited, have asserted that James 1. was pro- 


156 POPE. 


claimed on the 1st of January, 1603. Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, 
again, has ruined the entire chronology of the Life of Jeremy Taylor, 
and unconsciously vitiated the facts, by not understanding this frac- 
tional date. Mr. Roscoe even too often leaves his readers to collect 
the true year as they can. Thus, e. g. at p. 509, of his Life, he 
quotes from Pope’s letter to Warburton, in great vexation for the 
surreptitious publication of his letters in Ireland, under date of 
February 4, 1749. But why not have printed it intelligibly as 1741? 
Incidents there are in most men’s lives, which are susceptible of a 
totally different moral value, according as they are dated in one year 
or another. That might bea kind and honorable liberality in 1740, 
which would be a fraud upon creditors in 1741. Exile to a distance 
of ten miles from London in January, 1744, might argue, that a man 
was a turbulent citizen, and suspected of treason ; whilst the same 
exile in January, 1745, would simply argue that, as a Papist, he had 
been included amongst his whole body in a general measure of pre- 
caution to meet the public dangers of that year. This explanation 
we have thought it right to make, both for its extensive application 
to all editions of Pope, and on account of the serious blunders which 
have arisen from the case when ill understood; and because, in a 
work upon education, written jointly by Messrs. Lant Carpenter and 
Shephard, though generally men of ability and learning, this whole 
point is erroneously explained. 


Nore 2. Page 99. 


It is apparently with allusion to this part of his history, which he 
would often have heard from the lips of his own father, that Pope 
glances at his uncle’s memory somewhat disrespectfully in his prose 
letter to Lord Harvey. 


Note 3. Page 99. 


Some accounts, however, say to Flanders, in which case, perhaps, 
Antwerp or Brussels would have the honor of his conversion. 


Note 4. Page 101. 


This however was not Twyford, according to an anonymous 
pamphleteer of the times, but a Catholic seminary in Devonshire 
Street, that is, in the Bloomsbury district of London; and the same 
author asserts, that the scene of his disgrace, as indeed seems prob- 
able beforehand, was not the first, but the last of his arenas as @ 
schoolboy. Which indeed was first, and which last, is very unim- 


NOTES. 157 


portant; but with a view to another point, which is not without 
interest, namely, as to the motive of Pope for so bitter a lampoon as 
we must suppose it to have been, as well as with regard to the topies 
which he used to season it, this anonymous letter throws the only 
light which has been offered ; and strange it is, that no biographer 
of Pope should have hunted upon the traces indicated by him. Any 
solution of Pope’s virulence, and of the master’s bitter retaliation, 
even as a solution, is so far entitled to attention; apart from which 
the mere straightforwardness of this man’s story, and its minute cir- 
cumstantiality, weigh greatly in its favor. To our thinking, he un- 
folds the whole affair in the simple explanation, nowhere else to be 
found, that the master of the school, the mean avenger of a childish 
insult hy a bestial punishment, was a Mr. Bromley, one of James 
II.’s Popish apostates; whilst the particular statements which he 
makes with respect to himself and the young Duke of Norfolk of 
1700, as two schoolfellows of Pope at that time and place, together 
with his voluntary promise to come forward in person, and verify his 
account if it should happen to be challenged, — are all, we repeat, so 
many presumptions in favor of his veracity. ‘‘ Mr. Alexander 
Pope,” says he, ‘before he had been four months at this school, or 
was able toconstrue Tully’s Offices, employed his muse in satirizing 
his master. It was a libel of at least one hundred verses, which (a 
fellow-student having given information of it) was found in his 
pocket ; and the young satirist was soundly whipped, and kept a 
prisoner to his room for seven days ; whereupon his father fetched 
him away, and I have been told he never went to school more.” 
This Bromley, it has been ascertained, was the son of a country 
gentleman in Worcestershire, and must have had considerable pros- 
pects at one time, since it appears that he had been a gentleman- 
commoner at Christ’s Church, Oxford. There is an error in the 
punctuation of the letter we have just quoted, which affects the 
sense in a way very important to the question before us. Bromley is 
described as “one of King James’s converts in Oxford, some years 
after that prince’s abdication ; ” but, if this were really so, he must 
have been a conscientious convert. The latter clause should be con- 
nected with what follows: “ Some years after that prince’s abdica- 
tion he kept a little seminary ;” that is, when his mercenary views 
in quitting his religion were effectually defeated, when the Boyne 
had sealed his despair, he humbled himself into a petty schoolmas- 
ter. These facts are interesting, because they suggest at once the 
motive for the merciless punishment inflicted upon Pope. His own 
father was a Papist like Bromley, but a sincere and honest Papist, 


158 POPE. 


who had borne double taxes, legal stigmas, and public hatred for 
conscience’ sake. His contempt was habitually pointed at those 
who tampered with religion for interested purposeS. His son inher- 
ited these upright feelings. And we may easily guess what would 
be the hitter sting of any satire he would write on Bromley. Such 
a topic was too true to be forgiven, and too keenly barbed hy Brom- 
ley’s conscience. By the way, this writer, like ourselves, reads in 
this juvenile adventure a prefiguration of Pope’s satirical destiny. 


Nore 5. Page 107. 


That is, Sheffield, and, legally speaking, of BuckinghamshAire. 
For he would not take the title of Buckingham, under a fear that 
there was lurking somewhere or other a claim to that title amongst 
the connections of the Villiers family. He was a pompous grandee, 
who lived in uneasy splendor, and, as a writer, must extravagantly 
overrated ; accordingly, he is now forgotten. Such was his vanity, 
and his ridiculous mania for allying himself with royalty, that he 
first of all had the presumption to court the Princess (afterwards 
Queen) Anne. Being rejected, he then offered himself to the ille- 
gitimate daughter of James II., by the daughter of Sir Charles 
Sedley. She was as ostentatious as himself, and accepted him. 


Nore 6. Page 112. 


Meantime, the felicities of this translation are at times perfectly 
astonishing ; and it would be scarcely possible to express more ner- 
vously or amply the words, 


— "“jurisque secundi 
Ambitus impatiens, et summo dulcius unum 
Stare loco,” 


than this child of fourteen has done in the following couplet, which, 
most judiciously, by reversing the two clauses, gains the power of 
fusing them into connection : 
‘“‘ And impotent desire to reign alone, 
That scorns the dull reversion of a throne.” 


But the passage for which beyond all others we must make room, is 
a series of eight lines, corresponding to six in the original; and this 
for two reasons: First, Because Dr. Joseph Warton has deliberately 
asserted, that in our whole literature, ‘we have scarcely eight more 
beautiful lines than these ;? and though few readers will subscribe 
to so sweeping a judgment, yet certainly these must be wonderful 


NOTES. 159 


lines for a boy, which could challenge such commendation from an 
experienced polyhistor of infinite reading. Secondly, Because the 
lines contain a night-scene. Now it must be well known to many 
readers, that the famous night-scene in the Iliad, so familiar to every 
schoolboy, has been made the subject, for the last thirty years, of 
severe, and, in many respects, of just criticisms. This description 
will therefore have a double interest by comparison ; whilst, what- 
ever may be thought of either taken separately for itself, considered 
as a translation, this which we now quote is as true to Statius as 
the other is undoubtedly faithless to Homer: 


 Jamque per emeriti surgens confinia Phebi 
Titanis, late mundo subvecta silenti 
Rorifera gelidum tenuaverat aera big. 
Jam pecudes volucresque tacent: jam somnus avaris 
Inserpit curis, pronusque per aera nutat, 
Grata laborate re ferens oblivia vite.” 
Theb. i. 336 - 341. 


‘oT was now the time when Phebus yields to night, 
And rising Cynthia sheds her silver light ; 
Wide o’er the world in solemn pomp she drew 
Her airy chariot hung with pearly dew. 
All birds and beasts lie hush’d. Sleep steals away 
The wild desires of men and toils of day ; 
And brings, descending through the silent air, 
A sweet forgetfulness of human care.” 


Note 7. Page 113. 


One writer of that age says, in Cheapside ; but probably this dif- 


ference arose from contemplating Lombard Street as a prolongation 
of Cheapside. 


Note 8 Page 118. 


Dr. Johnson said, that all he could discover about Mr. Cromwell, 
was the fact of his going a hunting in a tie-wig ; but Gay has added 
another fact to Dr. Johnson’s, by calling him “‘ Honest hatless Crom- 
well with red breeches.”, This epithet has puzzled the commenta- 
tors ; but its import is obvious enough. Cromwell, as we learn from 
more than one person, was anxious to be considered a fine gentle- 
man, and devoted to women. Now it was long the custom in that 
age for such persons, when walking with ladies, to carry their hats 


160 POPE. 


in their hand. Louis XV. used to ride by the side of Madame de 
Pompadour hat in hand. 


Norte 9. Page 122. 


It is strange indeed to find, not only that Pope had so frequently 
kept rough copies of his own letters, and that he thought so well of 
them as to repeat the same letter to different persons, as in the case 
of the two lovers killed by lightning, or even to two sisters, Martha 
and Therese Blount (who were sure to communicate their letters,) 
but that even Swift had retained copies of his. 


Note 10. Page 133. 


The word undertake had not yet lost the meaning of Shakspeare’s 
age, in which it was understood to describe those cases where, the 
labor being of a miscellaneous kind, some person in chief offered to 
overlook and conduct the whole, whether with or without personal 
labor. The modern undertaker, limited to the care of funerals, was 
then but one of numerous cases to which the term was applied. 


Note 11. Page 147. 


We may illustrate this feature in the behavior of Pope to Savage. 
When all else forsook him, when all beside pleaded the insults of 
Savage for withdrawing their subscriptions, Pope sent his in advance. 
And when Savage had insulted Aim also, arrogantly commanding 
him never “to presume to interfere or meddle in his affairs,” dignity 
and self-respect made Pope obedient to these orders, except when 
there was an occasion of serving Savage. On his second visit to 
Bristol (when he returned from Glamorganshire,) Savage had been 
thrown into the jail of the city. One person only interested himself 
for this hopeless profligate, and was causing an inquiry to be made 
about his debts at the time Savage died. So much Dr. Johnson ad- 
mits; but he forgets to mention the name of this long-suffering 
friend. Ji was Pope. Meantime, let us not be supposed to believe 
the lying legend of Savage ; he was doubtless no son of Lady Mac- 
clesfield’s, but an impostor, who would not be sent to the tread-mill. 


CHARLES LAMB. 


Ir sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to 
say, that in every literature of large compass some 
authors will be found to rest much of the interest which 
surrounds them on their essential non-popularity. They 
are good for the very reason that they are not in con- 
formity to the current taste. They interest because to 
the world they are not interesting. They attract by 
means of their repulsion. Not as though it could sepa- 
rately furnish a reason for loving a book, that the 
majority of men had found it repulsive. Prima facie, 
it must suggest some presumption against a book, 
that it has failed to gain public attention. To have 
roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against 
its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a 
good sign. That argues power. Hatred may be prom- 
ising. The deepest revolutions of mind sometimes 
begin in hatred. But simply to have left a reader un- 
impressed, is in itself a neutral result, from which 
the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even simple 
failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result 

11 


162 CHARLES LAMB. 


from positive powers in a writer, from special originali- 
ties, such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of 
the ordinary understanding. It seems little to be per- 
ceived, how much the great scriptural! idea of the 
worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in litera- 
ture as well as in life. In reality the very same com- 
binations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which 
compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call world- 
liness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably 
present themselves in books. A library divides into 
sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of 
men divides into that same majority and minority. The 
world has an instinct for recognizing its own; and re- 
coils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, 
with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would 
have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance 
of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired 
self-communion, the world does and must turn away its 
face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more 
intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and 
not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, 
than it does in the realities of life. 

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class 
here contemplated ; he, if any ever has, ranks amongst 
writers whose works are destined to be forever unpopu- 
lar, and yet forever interesting ; interesting, moreover, 
by means of those very qualities which guarantee their 
non-popularity. The same qualities which will be 
found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless, 
which will be found insipid to many even amongst 
robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will 
continue to command a select audience in every gene- 


CHARLES LAMB. 163 


ration. The prose essays, under the signature of Elia, 
form the most delightful section amongst Lamb’s works. 
They traverse a peculiar field of observation, seques- 
tered from general interest ; and they are composed in 
a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of 
the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But 
this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered 
by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched 
with cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque 
quaintness of the objects casually described, whether 
men, or things, or usages, and, in the rear of all this, 
the constant recurrence to ancient recollections and to 
decaying forms of household life, as things retiring be- 
fore the tumult of new and revolutionary generations ; 
these traits in combination communicate to the papers a 
grace and strength of originality which nothing in any 
literature approaches, whether for degree or kind of ex- 
cellence, except the most felicitous papers of Addison, 
such as those on Sir Roger de Coverly, and some others 
in the same vein of composition. They resemble Addi- 
son’s papers also in the diction, which is natural and 
idiomatic, even to carelessness. They are equally 
faithful to the truth of nature ; and in this only they 
differ remarkably — that the sketches of Elia reflect 
the stamp and impress of the writer’s own character, 
whereas in all those of Addison the personal peculiari- 
ties of the delineator (though known to the reader from 
the beginning through the account of the club) are 
nearly quiescent. .Now and then they are recalled into 
a momentary notice, but they do not act, or at all modify 
his pictures of Sir Roger or Will Wimble. They are 
slightly and amiably eccentric ; but the Spectator him- 


164 CHARLES LAMB. 


self, in describing them, takes the station of an ordinary 
observer. 

Everywhere, indeed, in the writings of Lamb, and 
not merely in his Elia, the character of the writer 
cooperates in an under current to the effect of the thing 
written. ‘To understand in the fullest sense either the 
gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you 
must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the 
writer’s mind, whether native and original, or impressed 
gradually by the accidents of situation; whether simply 
developed out of predispositions by the action of life, 
or violently scorched into the constitution by some fierce 
fever of calamity. There is in modern literature a 
whole class of writers, though not a large one, standing 
within the same category; some marked originality of 
character in the writer become a coéfficient with what 
he says to a common result ; you must sympathize with 
this personality in the author before you can appre- 
ciate the most significant parts of his views. In most 
books the writer figures as a mere abstraction, without 
sex or age or local station, whom the reader banishes 
from his thoughts. What is written seems to proceed 
from a blank intellect, not from a man clothed with 
fleshly peculiarities and differences. These peculiari- 
ties and differences neither do, nor (generally speaking) 
could intermingle with the texture of the thoughts so 
as to modify their force or their direction. In such 
books, and they form the vast majority, there is noth- 
ing to be found or to be looked for beyond the direct 
objective. (Sit venia verbo!) But, in a small section 
of books, the objective in the thought becomes conflu- 
ent with the subjective in the thinker — the two forces 


CHARLES LAMB. 165 


unite for a joint product; and fully to enjoy that pro- 
duct, or fully to apprehend either element, both must 
be known. It is singular, and worth inquiring into, for 
the reason that the Greek and Roman literature had no 
such books. Timon of Athens, or Diogenes, one may 
conceive qualified for this mode of authorship, had 
journalism existed to rouse them in those days; their 
‘¢ articles”? would no doubt have been fearfully caustic. 
But, as they failed to produce anything, and Lucian in 
an after age is scarcely characteristic enough for the 
purpose, perhaps we may pronounce Rabelais and 
Montaigne the earliest of writers in the class described. 
In the century following theirs, came Sir Thomas 
Brown, and immediately after him La Fontaine. ‘Then 
came Swift, Sterne, with others less distinguished; in 
Germany, Hippel, the friend of Kant, Harmann, the 
obscure ; and the greatest of the whole body — John 
Paul Fr. Richter. In him, from the strength and de- 
terminateness of his nature as well as from the great 
extent of his writing, the philosophy of this interaction 
between the author as a human agency and his theme 
as an intellectual redgency, might best be studied. 
From him might be derived the largest number of cases, 
illustrating boldly this absorption of the universal into 
the concrete —of the pure intellect into the human 
nature of the author. But nowhere could illustrations 
be found more interesting — shy, delicate, evanescent — 
shy’as lightning, delicate and evanescent as the colored 
pencillings on a frosty night from the northern lights, 
than in the better parts of Lamb. 

To appreciate Lamb, therefore, it is requisite that his 
character and temperament should be understood in 


166 CHARLES LAMB. 


their coyest and most wayward features. A capital 
defect it would be if these could not be gathered silently 
from Lamb’s works themselves. It would be a fatal 
mode of dependency upon an alien and separable acci- 
dent if they needed an external commentary. But 
they do not. The syllables lurk up and down the 
writings of Lamb which decipher his eccentric nature. 
His character lies there dispersed in anagram ; and to 
any attentive reader the regathering and restoration of 
the total word from its scattered parts is inevitable with- 
out an effort. Still itis always a satisfaction in knowing 
a result, to know also its why and how; and in so far 
as every character is likely to be modified by the par- 
ticular experience, sad or joyous, through which the 
life has travelled, itis a good contribution towards the 
knowledge of that resulting character as a whole to 
have a sketch of that particular experience. What 
trials did it impose? What energies did it task ? What 
temptations did it unfold? These calls upon the moral 
powers, which in music so stormy, many a life is 
doomed to hear, how were they faced? The character 
in a capital degree moulds oftentimes the life, but the 
life always in a subordinate degree moulds the charac- 
ter. And the character being in this case’of Lamb so 
much of a key to the writings, it becomes important 
that the life should be traced, however briefly, as a key 
to the character. 

That is one reason for detaining the reader with some 
slight record of Lamb’s career. Such a record by 
preference and of right belongs to a case where the in- 
tellectual display, which is the sole ground of any 
public interest at all in the man, has been intensely 


CHARLES LAMB. 167 


modified by the humanities and moral personalities dis- 
tinguishing the subject. We read a Physiology, and 
need no information as to the life and conversation of 
its author ; a meditative poem becomes far better under- 
stood by the light of such information; but a work of 
genial and at the same time eccentric sentiment, wan- 
dering upon untrodden paths, is barely intelligible with- 
out it. There is a good reason for arresting judgment 
on the writer, that the court may receive evidence on 
the life of the man. But there is another reason, and, in 
any other place, a better; which reason lies in the ex- 
traordinary value of the life considered separately for 
itself. Logically, it is not allowable to say that here ; 
and, considering the principal purpose of this paper, 
any possible independent value of the life must rank as 
a better reason for reporting it. Since, in a case 
where the original object is professedly to estimate the 
writings of a man, whatever promises to further that 
object must, merely by that tendency, have, in relation 
to that place, a momentary advantage which it would 
lose if valued upon a more abstract scale. Liberated 
from this casual office of throwing light upon a book — 
raised to its grander station of a solemn deposition to 
the moral capacities of man in conflict with calamity — 
viewed as a return made into the chanceries of heaven — 
upon an issue directed from that court to try the amount 
of power lodged in a poor desolate pair of human crea- 
tures for facing the very anarchy of storms— this 
obscure life of the two Lambs, brother and sister, (for 
the two lives were one life,) rises into a grandeur that is 
not paralleled once in a generation. 

Rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of 


168 CHARLES LAMB. 


Charles Lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers 
to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is 
awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in 
the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of sub- 
mission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit 
of cheerfulness, it is possible ultimately to disarm or to 
blunt the very heaviest of curses — even the curse of lu- 
nacy. Had it been whispered, in hours of infancy, to 
Lamb, by the angel who stood by his cradle — ** Thou, 
and the sister that walks by ten years before thee, shall 
be through life, each to each, the solitary fountain of 
comfort ; and except it be from this fountain of mutual 
love, except it be as brother and sister, ye shall not 
taste the cup of peace on earth! ’’ — here, if there was 
sorrow in reversion, there was also consolation. 

But what funeral swamps would have instantly in- 
gulfed this consolation, had some meddling fiend pro- 
longed the revelation, and, holding up the curtain from 
the sad future a little longer, had said scornfully — 
‘Peace on earth! Peace for you two, Charles and 
Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse 
which even now is gathering against your heads? Is 
there peace on earth for the lunatic — peace for the pa- 
renticide — peace for the girl that, without warning, and 
without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, 
sends her mother to the last audit? ” And then, with- 
out treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of woe 
might have added—‘ Thou also, thyself, Charles 
Lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts 
of this dreadful hail-storm ; even thou shalt taste the se- 
crets of lunacy, and enter as a captive its house of bond- 
age ; whilst over thy sister the accursed scorpion shall 


CHARLES LAMB. 169 


hang suspended through life, like Death hanging over 
the beds of hospitals, striking at times, but more often 
threatening to strike ; or withdrawing its instant mena- 
ces only to lay bare her mind more bitterly to the per- 
secutions of a haunted memory!” Considering the 
nature of the calamity, in the first place; considering, 
in the second place, its life-long duration ; and, in the 
last place, considering the quality of the resistance by 
which it was met, and under what circumstances of 
humble resources in money or friends — we have come 
to the deliberate judgment, that the whole range of 
history scarcely presents a more affecting spectacle of 
perpetual sorrow, humiliation, or conflict, and that was 
supported to the end, (that is, through forty years,) with 
more resignation, or with more absolute victory. 
Charles Lamb was born in February of the year 
1775. His immediate descent was humble; for his 
father, though on one particular occasion civilly de- 
scribed as a ‘scrivener,”” was in reality a domestic 
servant to Mr. Salt—a bencher (and therefore a bar- 
rister of some standing) in the Inner Temple. John 
Lamb the father belonged by birth to Lincoln; from 
which city, being transferred to London whilst yet a 
boy, he entered the service of Mr. Salt without delay ; 
and apparently from this period throughout his life con- 
tinued in this good man’s household to support the hon- 
orable relation of a Roman client to his patronus, 
much more than that of a mercenary servant to a tran- 
sient and capricious master. The terms on which he 
seems to live with the family of the Lambs, argue a 
kindness and a liberality of nature on both sides. John 
Lamb recommended himself as an attendant by the 


170 CHARLES LAMB. 


versatility of his accomplishments ; and Mr. Salt, being 
a widower without children, which means in effect an 
old bachelor, naturally valued that encyclopedic range 
of dexterity which made his house independent of ex- 
ternal aid for every mode of service. To kill one’s 
own mutton is but an operose way of arriving at a 
dinner, and often a more costly way ; whereas to 
combine one’s own carpenter, locksmith, hair-dresser, 
groom, &c., all in one man’s person,—to have a 
Robinson Crusoe, up to all emergencies of life, always 
in waiting, — is a luxury of the highest class for one who 
values his ease. 

A consultation is held more freely with a man familiar 
to one’s eye, and more profitably with a man aware of 
one’s peculiar habits. And another advantage from 
such an arrangement is, that one gets any little altera- 
tion or repair executed on the spot. To hear is to obey, 
and by an inversion of Pope’s rule— 


*¢ One always is, and never fo be, blest.’’ 


People of one sole accomplishment, like the homo 
unius libri, are usually within that narrow circle dis- 
agreeably perfect, and therefore apt to be arrogant. 
People who can do all things, usually do every one of 
them ill; and living in a constant effort to deny this 
too palpable fact, they become irritably vain. But Mr. 
Lamb the elder seems to have been bent on perfection. 
He did all things; he did them all well; and yet was 
neither gloomily arrogant, nor testily vain. And being 
conscious apparently that all mechanic excellencies 
tend to illiberal results, unless counteracted by per- 
petual sacrifices to the muses, he went so far as to 


CHARLES LAMB. 171 


cultivate poetry; he even printed his poems, and were 
we possessed of a copy, (which we are not, nor proba- 
bly is the Vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this 
point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, 
purely on considerations of respect to the author’s 
memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did not 
really merit castigation ; and we should best show the 
sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, in all 
those cases where we could conscientiously profess 
respect by an unlimited application of the knout in the 
cases where we could not. 

The whole family of the Lambs seem to have won 
from Mr. Salt the consideration which is granted to 
humble friends; and from acquaintances nearer to their 
own standing, to have won a tenderness of esteem such 
as is granted to decayed gentry. Yet naturally, the 
social rank of the parents, as people still living, must 
have operated disadvantageously for the children. It 
is hard, even for the practised philosopher, to distin- 
guish aristocratic graces of manner, and capacities of 
delicate feeling, in people whose very hearth and dress 
bear witness to the servile humility of their station. 
Yet such distinctions as wild gifts of nature, timidly and 
half-unconsciously asserted themselves in the unpre- 
tending Lambs. Already in their favor there existed a 
silent privilege analogous to the famous one of Lord 
Kinsale. He, by special grant from the crown, is 
allowed, when standing before the king, to forget that 
he is not himself a king; the bearer of that peerage, 
through all generations, has the privilege of wearing his 
hat in the royal presence. By a general though tacit 
concession of the same nature, the rising generation of 


172 CHARLES LAMB. 


the Lambs, John and Charles, the two sons, and Mary 
Lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to forget that 
their grandmother had been a housekeeper for sixty 
years, and that their father had worn a livery. Charles 
Lamb, individually, was so entirely humble, and so 
careless of social distinctions, that he has taken pleasure 
in recurring to these very facts in the family records 
amongst the most genial of his Elia recollections. He 
only continued to remember, without shame, and with 
a peculiar tenderness, these badges of plebeian rank, 
when everybody else, amongst the few survivors that 
could have known of their existence, had long dismissed 
them from their thoughts. 

Probably, through Mr. Salt’s interest, Charles Lamb, 
in the autumn of 1782, when he wanted something 
more than four months of completing his eighth year, 
received a presentation to the magnificent school of 
Christ’s Hospital. The late Dr. Arnold, when con- 
trasting the school of his own boyish experience, 
Winchester, with Rugby, the school confided to his 
management, found nothing so much to regret in the 
circumstances of the latter as its forlorn condition with 
respect to historical traditions. Wherever these were 
wanting, and supposing the school of sufficient magni- 
tude, it occurred to Dr. Arnold that something of a 
compensatory effect for impressing the imagination 
might be obtained by connecting the school with the 
nation through the link of annual prizes issuing from 
the exchequer. An official basis of national patron- 
age might prove a substitute for an antiquarian or 
ancestral basis. Happily for the great educational 
foundations of London, none of them is in the naked 


CHARLES LAMB. 173 


condition of Rugby. Westminster, St. ‘Paul’s, Mer- 
chant Tailors’, the Charter-House, &c., are all crowned 
with historical recollections; and Christ’s Hospital, 
besides the original honors of its foundation, so fitted to 
a consecrated place in a youthful imagination — an 
asylum for boy-students, provided by a boy-king — 
innocent, religious, prematurely wise, and prematurely 
called away from earth — has also a mode of perpetual 
connection with the state. It enjoys, therefore, doth 
of Dr. Arnold’s advantages. Indeed, all the great 
foundation schools of London, bearing in their very 
codes of organization the impress of a double function 
— viz., the conservation of sound learning and of pure 
religion — wear something of a monastic or cloisteral 
character in their aspect and usages, which is peculiarly 
impressive, and even pathetic, amidst the uproars of a 
capital the most colossal and tumultuous upon earth. 
Here Lamb remained until his fifteenth year, which 
year threw him on the world, and brought him along- 
side the golden dawn of the French Revolution. Here 
he learned a little elementary Greek, and of Latin 
more than a little; for the Latin notes to Mr. Cary (of 
Dante celebrity) though brief, are sufficient to reveal a 
true sense of what is graceful and idiomatic in Latinity. 
We say this, who have studied that subject more than 
most men. It is not that Lamb would have found it an 
easy task to compose a long paper in Latin — nobody 
can find it easy to do what he has no motive for habitu- 
ally practising; but a single sentence of Latin wearing 
the secret countersign of the ‘*sweet Roman hand,” 
ascertains sufficiently that, in reading Latin classics, a 
man feels and comprehends their peculiar force or 


174 CHARLES LAMB. 


beauty. That is enough. It is requisite to a man’s 
expansion of mind that he should make acquaintance 
with a literature so radically differing from all modern 
literatures as is the Latin. It is not requisite that he 
should practise Latin composition. Here, therefore, 
Lamb obtained in sufficient perfection one priceless 
accomplishment, which even singly throws a graceful 
air of liberality over all the rest of a man’s attainments: 
having rarely any pecuniary value, it challenges the 
more attention to its intellectual value. Here also 
Lamb commenced the friendships of his life; and, of 
all which he formed, he lost none. Here it was, as the 
consummation and crown of his advantages from the 
time-honored hospital, that he came to know “ Poor 
S. T. C.? ror bavucowraror. 

Until 1796, it is probable that he lost sight of Cole- 
ridge, who was then occupied with Cambridge, having 
been transferred thither as a ‘ Grecian” from the 
house of Christ Church. That year, 1796, was a year 
of change and fearful calamity for Charles Lamb. On 
that year revolved the wheels of his after-life. During 
the three years succeeding to his school days, he had 
held a clerkship in the South Sea House. In 1795, 
he was transferred to the India House. As a junior 
clerk, he could not receive more than a slender salary ; 
but even this was important to the support of his par- 
ents and sister. They lived together in lodgings near 
Holborn ; and in the spring of 1796, Miss Lamb, (hav- 
ing previously shown signs of lunacy at intervals,) in a 
sudden paroxysm of her disease, seized a knife from 
the dinner table, and stabbed her mother, who died 
upon the spot. A coroner’s inquest easily ascertained 


CHARLES LAMB. 175 


the nature of a case which was transparent in all its 
circumstances, and never for a moment indecisive as 
regarded the medical symptoms. The poor young 
lady was transferred to the establishment for lunatics 
at Hoxton. She soon recovered, we believe ; but her 
relapses were as sudden as her recoveries, and she 
continued through life to revisit, for periods of uncer- 
tain seclusion, this house of woe. This calamity of his 
fireside, followed soon after by the death of his father, 
who had for some time been ina state of imbecility, 
determined the future destiny of Lamb. Apprehend- 
ing, with the perfect grief of perfect love, that his sis- 
ter’s fate was sealed for life — viewing her as his own 
greatest benefactress, which she really had been through 
her advantage by ten years of age — yielding with im- 
passioned readiness to the depth of his fraternal affection, 
what at any rate he would have yielded to the sanc- 
tities of duty as interpreted by his own conscience — 
he resolved forever to resign all thoughts of marriage 
with a young lady whom he loved, forever to abandon 
all ambitious prospects that might have tempted him 
into uncertainties, humbly to content himself with the 
certainties of his Indian clerkship, to dedicate himself 
for the future to the care of his desolate and prostrate 
sister, and to leave the rest to God. These sacrifices 
he made in no hurry or tumult, but deliberately, and in 
religious tranquillity. These sacrifices were accepted 
in heaven—and even on this earth they had their 
reward. She, for whom he gave up all, in turn gave 
up all for him. She devoted herself to his comfort. 
Many times she returned to the lunatic establishment, 
but many times she was restored to illuminate the 


176 CHARLES LAMB. 


household hearth for him ; and of the happiness which 
for forty years and more he had, no hour seemed true 
that was not derived from her. Henceforwards, there- 
fore, until he was emancipated by the noble generosity 
of the East India Directors, Lamb’s time, for nine-and- 
twenty years, was given to the India House. 

* O fortunati nimium, sua si bona nérint,” is appli- 
cable to more people than “ agricole.” Clerks of the 
India House are as blind to their own advantages as the 
blindest of ploughmen. Lamb was summoned, it is 
true, through the larger and more genial section of his 
life, to the drudgery of a copying clerk — making con- 
fidential entries into mighty folios, on the subject of 
calicoes and muslins. By this means, whether he 
would or not, he became gradually the author of a 
great ‘serial ” work, in a frightful number of volumes, 
on as dry a department of literature as the children of 
the great desert could have suggested. Nobody, he 
roust have felt, was ever likely to study this great work 
of his, not even Dr. Dryasdust. He had written in 
vain, which is not pleasant to know. There would be 
no second edition called for by a discerning public in 
Leadenhall Street; not a chance of that. And con- 
sequently the opera omnia of Lamb, drawn up in a 
hideous battalion, at the cost of labor so’ enormous, 
would be known only to certain families of spiders in 
one generation, and of rats in the next. Such a labor 
of Sysyphus, — the rolling up a ponderous stone to the 
summit of a hill only that it might roll back again 
by the gravitation of its own dulness, — seems a bad 
employment for a man of genius in his meridian 
energies. And yet, perhaps not. Perhaps the col- 


CHARLES LAMB. 177 


lective wisdom of Europe could not have devised for 
Lamb a more favorable condition of toil than this very 
India House clerkship. His works (his Leadenhall 
street works) were certainly not read; popular they 
could not be, for they were not read by anybody ; but 
then, to balance that, they were not reviewed. His 
folios were of that order, which (in Cowper’s words) 
*‘ not even critics criticise.” Is that nothing? Is it no 
happiness to escape the hands of scoundrel reviewers ? 
Many of us escape being read ; the worshipful reviewer 
does not find time to read a line of us; but we do not 
for that reason escape being criticised, ‘* shown up,” 
and martyred. The list of errata again, committed by 
Lamb, was probably of a magnitude to alarm any pos- 
sible compositor; and yet these errata will never be 
known to mankind. They are dead and buried. They 
have been cut off prematurely ; and for any effect upon 
their generation, might as well never have existed. 
Then the returns, in a pecuniary sense, from these 
folios — how important were they / - It is not common, 
certainly, to write folios; but neither is it common to 
draw a steady income of from 3800/1. to 4001. per an- 
num from volumes of any size. This will be admitted ; 
but would it not have been better to draw the income 
without the toil? Doubtless it would always be more 
agreeable to have the rose without the thorn. But in 
the case before us, taken with all its circumstances, 
we deny that the toil is truly typified as a thorn; so 
far from being a thorn in Lamb’s daily life, on the con- 
trary, it was a second rose ingrafted upon the original 
rose of the income, that he had to earn it by a moderate 
but continued exertion. Holidays, in a national estab- 
12 


178 CHARLES LAMB. 


lishment so great as the India House, and in our too 
fervid period, naturally could not be frequent; yet all 
great English corporations are gracious masters, and 
indulgences of this nature could be obtained on a special 
application. Not to count upon these accidents of favor, 
we find that the regular toil of those in Lamb’s situa- 
tion, began at ten in the morning and ended as the 
clock struck four in the afternoon. Six hours composed 
the daily contribution of labor, that is precisely one 
fourth part of the total day. Only that, as Sunday was 
exempted, the rigorous expression of the quota was one 
fourth of six-sevenths, which makes sixty twenty-eighths 
and not six twenty-fourths of the total time. Less toil 
than this would hardly have availed to deepen the sense 
of value in that large part of the time still remaining 
disposable. Had there been any resumption whatever 
of labor in the evening, though but for half an hour, 
that one encroachment upon the broad continuous area 
of the eighteen free hours would have killed the tran- 
quillity of the whole day, by sowing it (so to speak) 
with intermitting anxieties — anxieties that, like tides, 
would still be rising and falling. Whereas now, at the 
early hour of four, when daylight is yet lingering in 
the air, even at the dead of winter, in the latitude of 
London, and when the enjoying section of the day is 
barely commencing, everything is left which a man 
would care to retain. A mere dilettante or amateur 
student, having no mercenary interest concerned, would, 
upon a refinement of luxury — would, upon choice, 
give up so much time to study, were it only to sharpen 
the value of what remained for pleasure. And thus 
the only difference between the scheme of the India 


CHARLES LAMB. 179 


House distributing his time for Lamb, and the scheme 
of a wise voluptuary distributing his time for himself, 
lay, not in the amount of time deducted from enjoy- 
ment, but in the particular mode of appropriating that 
deduction. An intellectual appropriation of the time, 
though casually fatiguing, must have pleasures of its 
own; pleasures denied to a task so mechanic and so 
monotonous as that of reiterating endless records of 
sales or consignments not essentially varying from each 
other. True; it is pleasanter to pursue an intellectual 
study than to make entries in a ledger. But even an 
intellectual toil is toil; few people can support it for 
more than six hours ina day. And the only question, 
therefore, after all, is, at what period of the day a man 
would prefer taking this pleasure of study. Now, upon 
that point, as regards the case of Lamb, there is no 
opening for doubt. He, amongst his Popular Fallacies, 
admirably illustrates the necessity of evening and artifi- 
cial lights to the prosperity of studies. After exposing, 
with the perfection of fun, the savage unsociality of 
those elder ancestors who lived (if life it was) before 
lamp-light was invented, showing that “jokes came 
in with candles,” since ‘what repartees could have 
passed ’’ when people were “ grumbling at one another 
in the dark,” and ** when you must have felt about for 
a smile, and handled a neighbor’s cheek to be sure that 
he understood it ?”’— he goes on to say, ** This accounts 
for the seriousness of the elder poetry,” viz., because 
they had no candle-light. Even eating he objects to as 
avery imperfect thing in the dark; you are not con- 
vinced that a dish tastes as it should do by the promise 
of its name, if you dine in the twilight without candles. 


180 CHARLES LAMB. 


Seeing is believing. ‘* The senses absolutely give and 
take reciprocally.” The sight guarantees the taste. 
For instance, “Can you tell pork from veal in the 
dark, or distinguish Sherries from pure Malaga?” To 
all enjoyments whatsoever candles are indispensable as 
an adjunct; but, as to reading, ‘ there is,” says Lamb, 
‘‘ absolutely no such thing but by a candle. We have 
tried the affectation of a book at noon-day in gardens, 
but it was labor thrown away. It is a mockery, all that 
is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true poem 
ever owed its birth to the sun’s light. The mild 
internal light, that reveals the fine shapings of poetry, 
like fires on the domestic hearth, goes out in the sun- 
shine. Milton’s morning hymn in Paradise, we would 
hold a good wager, was penned at midnight; and Tay- 
lor’s rich description of a sunrise smells decidedly of 
the taper.” This view of evening and candle-light as 
involved in literature may seem no more than a pleas- 
ant extravaganza; and no doubt it is in the nature of 
such gayeties to travel a little into exaggeration, but 
substantially it is certain that Lamb’s feelings pointed 
habitually in the direction here indicated. His literary 
studies, whether taking the color of tasks or diversions, 
courted the aid of evening, which, by means of phys- 
ical weariness, produces a more luxurious state of re- 
pose than belong to the labor hours of day, and courted 
the aid of lamp-light, which, as Lord Bacon remarked, 
gives a gorgeousness to human pomps and pleasures, 
such as would be vainly sought from the homeliness of 
day-light. The hours, therefore, which were with- 
drawn from his own control by the India House, 
happened to be exactly that part of the day which 


CHARLES LAMB. 18i 


Lamb least valued, and could least have turned to 
account. 

The account given of Lamb’s friends, of those whom 
he endeavored to love because he admired them, or to 
esteem intellectually because he loved them personally, 
is too much colored for general acquiescence by Ser- 
geant Talfourd’s own early prepossessions. It is natural 
that an intellectual man like the Sergeant, personally 
made known in youth to people, whom from child- 
hood he had regarded as powers in the ideal world, and 
in some instances as representing the eternities of 
human speculation, since their names had perhaps 
dawned upon his mind in concurrence with the very 
earliest suggestion of topics which they had treated, 
should overrate their intrinsic grandeur. Hazlitt ac- 
cordingly is styled ‘“* The great thinker.” But had he 
been such potentially, there was an absolute bar to his 
achievement of that station in act and consummation. 
No man can be a great thinker in our days upon large 
and elaborate questions without being also a great stu- 
dent. To think profoundly, it is indispensable that a 
man should have read down to his own starting point, 
and have read as a collating student to the particular 
stage at which he himself takes up the subject. At 
this moment, for instance, how could geology be treated 
otherwise than childishly by one who should rely upon 
the encyclopedias of 1800? or comparative physiology 
by the most ingenious of men unacquainted with Mar- 
shall Hall, and with the apocalyptic glimpses of secrets 
unfolding under the hands of Professor Owen? In such 
a condition of undisciplined thinking, the ablest man 
thinks to no purpose. He lingers upon parts of the 


182 CHARLES LAMB, 


inquiry that have lost the importance which once they 
had, under imperfect charts of the subject ; he wastes 
his strength upon problems that have become obsolete ; 
he loses his way in paths that are not in the line of 
direction upon which the improved speculation is mov- . 
ing; or he gives narrow conjectural solutions of 
difficulties that have long since received sure and com- 
prehensive ones. It is a sif a man should in these days 
attempt to colonize, and yet, through inertia or through 
ignorance, should leave behind him all modern resources 
of chemistry, of chemical agriculture, or of steam- 
power. Hazlitt had read nothing. Unacquainted with 
Grecian philosophy, with Scholastic philosophy, and 
with the recomposition of these philosophies in the 
looms of Germany during the last sixty and odd years, 
trusting merely to the unrestrained instincts of keen 
mother-wit — whence should Hazlitt have had the ma- 
terials for great thinking? It is through the collation 
of many abortive voyages to polar regions that a man 
gains his first chance of entering the polar basin, or of 
running ahead on the true line of approach to it. The 
very reason for Hazlitt’s defect in eloquence as a lec- 
turer, is sufficient also as a reason why he could not 
have been a comprehensive thinker. ‘ He was not 
eloquent,”’ says the Sergeant, ** in the true sense of the 
term.” But why? Because it seems “his thoughts 
were too weighty to be moved along by the shallow 
stream of feeling which an evening’s excitement can 
rouse,” —an explanation which leaves us in doubt 
whether Hazlitt forfeited his chance of eloquence by 
accommodating himself to this evening’s excitement, or 
by gloomily resisting it. Our own explanation is differ- 


CHARLES LAMB. 183 


ent, Hazlitt was not eloquent, because he was discon- 
tinuous. No man can be eloquent whose thoughts are 
abrupt, insulated, capricious, and (to borrow an impres- 
sive word from Coleridge) non-sequacious. Eloquence 
resides not in separate or fractional ideas, but in the 
relations of manifold ideas, and in the mode of their 
evolution from each other. It is not indeed enough 
that the ideas should be many, and their relations 
coherent; the main condition lies in the key of the 
evolution, in the Jaw of the succession. The elements 
are nothing without the atmosphere that moulds, and 
the dynamic forces that combine. Now Hazlitt’s bril- 
liancy is seen chiefly in separate splinterings of phrase 
or image which throw upon the eye a vitreous scintilla- 
tion for a moment, but spread no deep suffusions of 
color, and distribute no masses of mighty shadow. A 
flash, a solitary flash, and all is gone. Rhetoric, accord- 
ing to its quality, stands in many degrees of relation to 
the permanencies of truth; and all rhetoric, Jike all 
flesh, is partly unreal, and the glory of both is fleeting. 
Even the mighty rhetoric of Sir Thomas Brown, or 
Jeremy ‘Taylor, to whom only it has been granted to 
open the trumpet-stop on that great organ of passion, 
oftentimes leaves behind it the sense of sadness which 
belongs to beautiful apparitions starting out of darkness 
upon the morbid eye, only to be reclaimed by darkness 
in the instant of their birth, or which belongs to 
pageantries in the clouds. But if all rhetoric is a mode 
of pyrotechny, and all pyrotechnics are by necessity 
fugacious, yet even in these frail pomps, there are 
many degrees of frailty. Some fireworks require an 
hour’s duration for the expansion of their glory ; others, 


184 CHARLES LAMB. 


as if formed from fulminating powder, expire in the 
very act of birth. Precisely on that scale of duration 
and of power stand the glitterings of rhetoric that are 
not worked into the texture, but washed on from the 
outside. Hazlitt’s thoughts were of the same fractured 
and discontinuous order as his illustrative images — 
seldom or never self-diffusive ; and that is a sufficient 
argument that he had never cultivated philosophic 
thinking. 

Not, however, to conceal any part of the truth, we 
are bound to acknowledge that Lamb thought otherwise 
on this point, manifesting what seemed to us an extrav- 
agant admiration of Hazlitt, and perhaps even in part 
for that very glitter which we are denouncing — at least 
he did so in a conversation with ourselves. But, on 
the other hand, as this conversation travelled a little 
into the tone of a disputation, and our frost on this point 
might seem to justify some undue fervor by way of 
balance, it is very possible that Lamb did not speak his 
absolute and most dispassionate judgment. And yet 
again, if he did, may we, with all reverence for Lamb’s 
exquisite genius, have permission to say — that his own 
constitution of intellect sinned by this very habit of dis- 
continuity. It was a habit of mind not unlikely to be 
cherished by his habits of life. Amongst these habits 
was the excess of his social kindness. He scorned so 
much to deny his company and his redundant hospi- 
tality to any man who manifested a wish for either by 
calling upon him, that he almost seemed to think ita 
criminality in himself if, by accident, he really was 
from home on your visit, rather than by possibility a 
negligence in you, that had not forewarned him of your 


CHARLES LAMB. 185 


intention. All his life, from this and other causes, he 
must have read in the spirit of one lable to sudden 
interruption; like a dragoon, in fact, reading with one 
foot in the stirrup, when expecting momentarily a 
summons to mount for action. In such situations, read- 
ing by snatches, and by intervals of precarious leisure, 
people form the habit of seeking and unduly valuing 
condensations of the meaning, where in reality the 
truth suffers by this short-hand exhibition, or else they 
demand too vivid illustrations of the meaning. Lord 
Chesterfield himself, so brilliant a man by nature, 
already therefore making a morbid estimate of bril- 
liancy, and so hurried throughout his life as a public 
man, read under this double coercion for craving instan- 
taneous effects. At one period, his only time for read- 
ing was in the morning, whilst under the hands of his 
hair-dresser ; compelled to take the hastiest of flying 
shots at his author, naturally he demanded a very con- 
spicuous mark to fire at. But the author could not, in 
so brief a space, be always sure to crowd any very 
prominent objects on the eye, unless by being auda- 
ciously oracular and peremptory as regarded the senti- 
ment, or flashy in excess as regarded its expression. 
“Come now, my friend,” was Lord Chesterfield’s 
morning adjuration to his author; ‘come now, cut it 
short — don’t prose — don’t hum and haw.” The 
author had doubtless no ambition to enter his name on 
the honorable and ancient roll of gentlemen prosers ; 
probably he conceived himself not at all tainted with 
the asthmatic infirmity of humming and hawing ; but, 
as to ** cutting it short,” how could he be sure of meet- 
ing his lordship’s expectations in that point, unless by 


186 CHARLES LAMB. 


dismissing the limitations that might be requisite to fit 
the idea for use, or the adjuncts that might be requisite to 
integrate its truth, or the final consequences that might 
involye some deep arriére pensée, which, coming last 
in the succession, might oftentimes be calculated to lie 
deepest on the mind. To be lawfully and usefully 
brilliant after this rapid fashion, a man must come for- 
ward as a refresher of old truths, where his suppres- 
sions are supplied by the reader’s memory ; not as an 
expounder of new truths, where oftentimes a dislocated 
fraction of the true is more dangerous than the false 
itself, 

To read therefore habitually, by hurried instalments, 
has this bad tendency — that it is likely to found a taste 
for modes of composition too artificially irritating, and 
to disturb the equilibrium of the judgment in relation to 
the colorings of style. Lamb, however, whose consti- 
tution of mind was even ideally sound in reference to 
the natural, the simple, the genuine, might seem of all 
men least liable to a taint in this direction. And un- 
doubtedly he was so, as regarded those modes of beauty 
which nature had specially qualified him’ for appre- 
hending. Else, and in relation to other modes of 
beauty, where his sense of the true, and of its distinc- 
tion from the spurious, had been an acquired sense, it 
is impossible for us to hide from ourselves — that not 
through habits only, not through stress of injurious 
accidents only, but by original structure and tempera- 
ment of mind, Lamb had a bias towards those very 
defects on which rested the startling characteristics of 
style which we have been noticing. He himself, we 
fear, not bribed by indulgent feelings to another, not 


CHARLES LAMB. 187 


moved by friendship, but by native tendency, shrank 
from the continuous, from the sustained, from the 
elaborate. 

The elaborate, indeed, without which much truth and 
beauty must perish in germ, was by name the object of 
his invectives. The instances are many, in his own 
beautiful essays, where he literally collapses, literally 
sinks away from openings suddenly offering themselves 
to flights of pathos or solemnity in direct prosecution of 
his own theme. On any such summons, where an 
ascending impulse, and an untired pinion were required, 
he refusés himself (to use military language) invaria- 
bly. The least observing reader of Elia cannot have 
failed to notice that the most felicitous passages always 
accomplish their circuit in a few sentences. ‘The 
gyration within which his sentiment wheels, no matter 
of what kind it may be, is always the shortest possible. 
It does not prolong itself, and it does not repeat itself. 
But in fact, other features in Lamb’s mind would have 
argued this feature by analogy, had we by accident 
been left unaware of it directly. It is not by chance, 
or without a deep ground in his nature, common to all 
his qualities, both affirmative and negative, that Lamb 
had an insensibility to music more absolute than can 
have been often shared by any human creature, or 
perhaps than was ever before acknowledged so can- 
didly. ‘The sense of music, — as a pleasurable sense, or 
as any sense at all other than of certain unmeaning and 
impertinent differences in respect to high and low, 
sharp or flat, — was utterly obliterated as with a sponge 
by nature herself from Lamb’s organization. It was a 
corollary, from the same large substratum in his nature, 


188 CHARLES LAMB. 


that Lamb had no sense of the rhythmical in prose 
composition. Rhythmus, or pomp of cadence, or son- 
orous ascent of clauses, in the structure of sentences, 
were effects of art as much thrown away upon him as 
the voice of the charmer upon the deaf adder. We 
ourselves, occupying the very station of polar opposi- 
tion to that of Lamb, being as morbidly, perhaps, in 
the one excess as he in the other, naturally detected 
this omission in Lamb’s nature at an early stage of our 
acquaintance. Not the fabled Regulus, with his eye- 
lids torn away, and his uncurtained eye-balls exposed 
to the noon-tide glare of a Carthaginian sun, could have 
shrieked with more anguish of recoil from torture than 
we from certain sentences and periods in which Lamb 
perceived no fault at all. Pomp, in our apprehension, 
was an idea of two categories; the pompous might be 
spurious, but it might also be genuine. It is well to 
love the simple — we love it; nor is there any opposition 
at all between that and the very glory of pomp. But, 
as we once put the case to Lamb, if, as a musician, as 
the leader of a mighty orchestra, you had this theme 
offered to you—‘“ Belshazzar the king gave a great 
feast to a thousand of his lords’? — or this, ** And ona 
certain day, Marcus Cicero stood up, and in a set 
speech rendered solemn thanks to Caius Cesar for 
Quintus Ligarius pardoned, and for Marcus Marcellus 
restored’? — surely no man would deny that, in sucha 
case, simplicity, though in a passive sense not lawfully 
absent, must stand aside as totally insufficient for the 
positive part. Simplicity might guide, even here, but 
could not furnish the power; a rudder it might be, but 
not an oar ora sail. This, Lamb was ready to allow ; 


CHARLES LAMB. 189 


as an intellectual guiddity, he recognized pomp in the 
character of a privileged thing; he was obliged to do 
so; for take away from great ceremonial festivals, 
such as the solemn rendering of thanks, the celebration 
of national anniversaries, the commemoration of public 
benefactors, &c., the element of pomp, and you take 
away their very meaning and life ; but, whilst allowing 
a place for it in the rubric of the logician, it is certain 
that, sensuously, Lamb would not have sympathized 
with it, nor have felt its justification in any concrete 
instance. We find a difficulty in pursuing this subject, 
without greatly exceeding our limits. We pause, there- 
fore, and add only this one suggestion as partly ex- 
planatory of the case. Lamb had the dramatic intellect 
and taste, perhaps in perfection ; of the Epic, he had 
none at all. Here, as happens sometimes to men of 
genius preternaturally endowed in one direction, he 
might be considered as almost starved. A favorite of 
nature, so eminent in some directions, by what right 
could he complain that her bounties were not indis- 
criminate? From this defect in his nature it arose, 
that, except by culture and by reflection, Lamb had no 
genial appreciation of Milton. The solemn planetary 
wheelings of the Paradise Lost were not to his taste. 
What he did comprehend, were the motions like those 
of lightning, the fierce angular coruscations of that wild 
agency which comes forward so vividly in the sudden 
megutérrere, In the revolutionary catastrophe, and in the 
tumultuous conflicts, through persons or through situa- 
tions, of the tragic drama. 

There is another vice in Mr. Hazlitt’s mode of com- 
position, viz., the habit of trite quotation, too common 


190 CHARLES LAMB. 


to have challenged much notice, were it not for these 
reasons: Ist, That Sergeant Talfourd speaks of it in 
equivocal terms, as a fault perhaps, but as a “ felici- 
tous ” fault, “‘ trailing after it a line of golden associa- 
tions;” 2dly, because the practice involves a dishon- 
esty. On occasion of No. 1, we must profess our belief 
that a more ample explanation from the Sergeant would 
have left him in substantial harmony with ourselves. 
We cannot conceive the author of Ion, and the friend 
of Wordsworth, seriously to countenance that paralytic 
‘‘ mouth-diarrheea,” (to borrow a phrase of Coleridge’s) 
— that fluxe de bouche (to borrow an earlier phrase of 
Archbishop Huet’s) which places the reader at the 
mercy of a man’s tritest remembrances from his most 
school-boy reading. ‘To have the verbal memory in- 
fested with tags of verse and “cues” of rhyme is in 
itself an infirmity as vulgar and as morbid as the stable- 
boy’s habit of whistling slang airs upon the mere me- 
chanical excitement of a bar or two whistled by some 
other blockhead in some other stable. The very stage 
has grown weary of ridiculing a folly, that having been 
long since expelled from decent society has taken 
refuge amongst the most imbecile of authors. Was 
Mr. Hazlitt then of that class? No; he was a man of 
great talents, and of capacity for greater things than he 
ever attempted, though without any pretensions of the 
philosophic kind ascribed to him by the Sergeant. 
Meantime the reason for resisting the example and 
practice of Hazlitt lies in this — that essentially it is at 
war with sincerity, the foundation of all good writing, 
to express one’s own thoughts by another man’s words, 
This dilemma arises. The thought is, or it is not, 


CHARLES LAMB. 191 


worthy of that emphasis which belongs to a metrical 
expression of it. If it is not, then we shall be guilty of 
a mere folly in pushing into strong relief that which 
confessedly cannot support it. If it ds, then how in- 
eredible that a thought strongly conceived, and bearing 
about it the impress of one’s own individuality, should 
naturally, and without dissimulation or falsehood, bend 
to another man’s expression of it! Simply to back 
one’s own view by a similar view derived from another, 
may be useful; a quotation that repeats one’s own senti- 
ment, but in a varied form, has the grace which belongs 
to the idem in alio, the same radical idea expressed 
with a difference — similarity in dissimilarity ; but to 
throw one’s own thoughts, matter, and form, through 
alien organs so absolutely as to make another man 
one’s interpreter for evil and good, is either to confess 
a singular laxity of thinking that can so flexibly adapt 
itself to any casual form of words, or else to confess 
that sort of carelessness about the expression which 
draws its real origin from a sense of indifference about 
the things to be expressed. Utterly at war this dis- 
tressing practice is with all simplicity and earnestness 
of writing; it argues a state of indolent ease incon- 
sistent with the pressure and coercion of strong fer- 
menting thoughts, before we can be at leisure for idle 
or chance quotations. But lastly, in reference to No. 2, 
we must add that the practice is signally dishonest. It 
“trails after it a line of golden associations.” Yes, 
and the burglar, who leaves an army-tailor’s after a 
midnight visit, trails after him perhaps a long roll of 
gold bullion epaulettes which may look pretty by lamp- 
light. 


192 CHARLES LAMB. 


But that, in the present condition of moral philosophy 
amongst the police, is accounted robbery; and to 
benefit too much by quotations is little less. At this 
moment we have in our eye a work, at one time not 
without celebrity, which is one continued cento of splen- 
did passages from other people. The natural effect 
from so much fine writing is, that the reader rises 
with the impression of having been engaged upon a 
most eloquent work. Meantime the whole is a series of 
mosaics ; a tessellation made up from borrowed frag- 
ments: and first, when the reader’s attention is ex- 
pressly directed upon the fact, he becomes aware that 
the nominal author has contributed nothing more to the 
book than a few passages of transition or brief clauses 
of connection. 

In the year 1796, the main incident occurring of any 
importance for English literature was the publication 
by Southey of an epic poem. This poem, the Joan of 
Arc, was the earliest work of much pretension amongst 
all that Southey wrote ; and by many degrees it was 
the worst. In the four great narrative poems of his 
later years, there is a combination of two striking 
qualities, viz., a peculiar command over the visually 
splendid, connected with a deep-toned grandeur of 
moral pathos. Especially we find this union in the 
Thalaba and the Roderick ; but in the Joan of Arc we 
miss it. What splendor there is for the fancy and the eye 
belongs chiefly to the Vision, contributed by Coleridge, 
and this was subsequently withdrawn. The fault lay 
in Southey’s political relations at that era; his sympa- 
thy with the French Revolution in its earlier stages had 
been boundless ; in all respects it was a noble sympathy, 


CHARLES LAMB. 193 


fading only as the gorgeous coloring faded from the 
emblazonries of that awful event, drooping only when 
the promises of that golden dawn sickened under sta- 
tionary eclipse. In 1796, Southey was yet under the 
tyranny of his own earliest fascination: in his eyes the 
Revolution had suffered a momentary blight from re- 
fluxes of panic; but blight of some kind is incident to 
every harvest on which human hopes are suspended. 
Bad auguries were also ascending from the unchaining 
of martial instincts. But that the Revolution, having 
ploughed its way through unparalleled storms, was pre- 
paring to face other storms, did but quicken the appre- 
hensiveness of his love — did but quicken the duty of 
giving utterance to this love. Hence came the rapid 
composition of the poem, which cost less time in 
writing than in printing. Hence, also, came the choice 
of his heroine. What he needed in his central charac- 
ter was, a heart with a capacity for the wrath of 
Hebrew prophets applied to ancient abuses, and for 
evangelic pity applied to the sufferings of nations. 
This heart, with this double capacity — where should 
he seek it? A French heart it must be, or how should 
it follow with its sympathies a French movement ? 
There lay Southey’s reason for adopting the Maid of 
Orleans as the depositary of hopes and aspirations on 
behalf of France as fervid as his own. In choosing 
this heroine, so inadequately known at that time, 
Southey testified at least his own nobility of feeling ; 3 
but in executing his choice, he and his friends over- 
looked two faults fatal to his purpose. One was this: 
sympathy with the French Revolution meant sympathy 
with the opening prospects of man— meant sympathy 
13 


194 CHARLES LAMB. 


with the Pariah of every clime — with all that suffered 
social wrong, or saddened in hopeless bondage. 

That was the movement at work in the French Rey- 
olution. But the movement of Joanne d’Arc took a 
different direction. In her day also, it is true, the 
human heart had yearned after the same vast enfran- 
chisement for the children of labor as afterwards 
worked in the great vision of the French Revolution. 
In her days also, and shortly before them, the human 
hand had sought by bloody acts to realize this dream of 
the heart. And in her childhood, Joanna had not been 
insensible to these premature motions upon a path too 
bloody and too dark to be safe. But this view of hu- 
man misery had been utterly absorbed to her by the 
special misery then desolating France. ‘The lilies of 
France had been trampled under foot by the conquering 
stranger. . Within fifty years, in three pitched battles 
that resounded to the ends of the earth, the chivalry of 
France had been exterminated. Her oriflamme had 
been dragged through the dust. The eldest son of 
Baptism had been prostrated. ‘The daughter of France 
had been surrendered on coercion as a bride to her 
English conqueror. The child of that marriage, so 
ignominious to the land, was King of France by the 
consent of Christendom ; that child’s uncle domineered 
as regent of France ; and that child’s armies were in 
military possession of the land. But were they undis- 
puted masters? No; and there precisely lay the sor- 
row of the time. Under a perfect conquest there would 
have been repose; whereas the presence of the Eng- 
lish armies did but furnish a plea, masking itself in 
patriotism, for gatherings everywhere of lawless ma- 


CHARLES LAMB. 195 


rauders ; of soldiers that had deserted their banners ; 
and of robbers by profession. This was the woe of 
France more even than the military dishonor. That 
dishonor had been palliated from the first by the gene- 
alogical pretensions of the English royal family to the 
French throne, and these pretensions were strengthened 
‘in the person of the present claimant. But the military 
desolation of France, this it was that woke the faith of 
Joanna in her own heavenly mission of deliverance. 
It was the attitude of her prostrate country, crying 
night and day for purification from blood, and not from 
feudal oppression, that swallowed up the thoughts of 
the impassioned girl. But that was not the cry that 
uttered itself afterwards in the French Revolution. 
In Joanna’s days, the first step towards rest for France 
was by expulsion of the foreigner. Independence of a 
foreign yoke, liberation as between people and people, 
was the one ransom to be paid for French honor and 
peace. That debt settled, there might come a time for 
thinking of civil liberties. But this time was not within 
the prospects of the poor shepherdess. The field — 
the area of her sympathies never coincided with that 
of the Revolutionary period. It followed therefore, 
that Southey could not have raised Joanna (with her 
condition of feeling) by any management, into the 
interpreter of his own. That was the first error in his 
poem, and it was irremediable. The second was — and 
strangely enough this also escaped notice — that the 
heroine of Southey is made to close her career pre- 
cisely at the point when its grandeur commences. She 
believed herself to have a mission for the deliverance 
of France; and the great instrument which she was 


196 CHARLES LAMB. 


authorized to use towards this end, was the king, 
Charles VII. Him she was to crown. With this coro- 
nation, her triumph, in the plain historical sense, ended. 
And there ends Southey’s poem. But exactly at this 
point, the grander stage of her mission commences, 
viz., the ransom which she, a solitary girl, paid in her 
own person for the national deliverance. ‘The grander 
half of the story was thus sacrificed, as being irrelevant 
to Southey’s political object; and yet, after all, the half 
which he retained did not at all symbolize that object. 
It is singular, indeed, to find a long poem, on an 
ancient subject, adapting itself hieroglyphically to a 
modern purpose; 2dly, to find it failing of this pur- 
pose; and 3dly, if it had not failed, so planned that 
it could have succeeded only by a sacrifice of all that 
was grandest in the theme. 

To these capital oversights, Southey, Coleridge, and 
Lamb, were all joint parties ; the two first as concerned 
in the composition, the last as a frank though friendly 
reviewer of it in his private correspondence with 
Coleridge. It is, however, some palliation of these 
oversights, and a very singular fact in itself, that 
neither from English authorities nor from French, 
though the two nations were equally brought into close 
connection with the career of that extraordinary girl, 
could any adequate view be obtained of her character 
and acts. The official records of her trial, apart from 
which nothing can be depended upon, were first in the 
course of publication from the Paris press during the 
currency of last year. First in 1847, about four 
hundred and sixteen years after her ashes had been 
dispersed to the winds, could it be seen distinctly, 


CHARLES LAMB. 197 


through the clouds of fierce partisanships and national 
prejudices, what had been the frenzy of the perse- 
cution against her, and the utter desolation of her 
position; what had been the grandeur of her con- 
scientious resistance. 

Anxious that our readers should see Lamb from as 
many angles as possible, we have obtained from an 
old friend of his a memorial — slight, but such as the 
circumstances allowed — of an evening spent with 
Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821 — 22. 
The record is of the most unambitious character ; it 
pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so 
much as to a pun, which it really required some 
singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, 
who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all 
through the evening. But the more unpretending this 
record is, the more appropriate it becomes by that very 
fact to the memory of him who, amongst all authors, 
was the humblest and least pretending. We have 
often thought that the famous epitaph written for his 
grave by Piron, the cynical author of La Métromanie, 
might have come from Lamb, were it not for one 
objection; Lamb’s benign heart would have recoiled 
from a sarcasm, however effective, inscribed upon a 
grave-stone; or from a jest, however playful, that 
tended to a vindictive sneer amongst his own farewell 
words. We once translated this Piron epitaph into a 
kind of rambling Drayton couplet; and the only point 
needing explanation is, that, from the accident of 
scientific men, Fellows of the Royal Society being 
usually very solemn men, with an extra chance, there- 
fore, for being dull men in conversation, naturally it 


198 CHARLES LAMB. 


arose that some wit amongst our great-grandfathers 
translated F. R. S. into a short-hand expression for a 
Fellow Remarkably Stupid; to which version of the 
three letters our English epitaph alludes. The French 
original of Piron is this: 

“Ci git Piron; qui ne fut rien; 

Pas méme académicien.” 

The bitter arrow of the second line was feathered to 
hit the French Académie, who had declined to elect 
him a member. Our translation is this: 


“ Here lies Piron; who was — nothing; or, if that could be, was - 


less: 
How! —nothing? Yes, nothing; not so much as F. R. 8.” 


But now to our friend’s memorandum : 
October 6, 1848. 

My pear X.— You ask me for some memorial, 
however trivial, of any dinner party, supper party, 
water party, no matter what, that I can circumstantially 
recall to recollection, by any features whatever, puns 
or repartees, wisdom or wit, connecting it with Charles 
Lamb. I grieve to say that my meetings of any sort 
with Lamb were few, though spread through a score 
of years. That sounds odd for one that loved Lamb 
so entirely, and so much venerated his character. But 
the reason was, that I so seldom visited London, and 
Lamb so seldom quitted it. Somewhere about 1810 
and 1812 I must have met Lamb repeatedly at the 
Courier Office in the Strand ; that is, at Coleridge’s, to 
whom, as an intimate friend, Mr. Stuart (a proprietor 
of the paper) gave up for a time the use of some 
rooms in the office. Thither, in the London season, 


bs ie 


CHARLES LAMB. 199 


(May especially and June,) resorted Lamb, Godwin, 
Sir H. Davy, and, once or twice, Wordsworth, who 
visited Sir George Beaumont’s Leicestershire residence 
of Coleorton early in the spring, and then travelled 
up to Grosvenor Square with Sir George and Lady 
Beaumont ; “ spectatum veniens, veniens spectetur ut 
apse.” 

But in these miscellaneous gatherings, Lamb said 
little, except when an opening arose fora pun. And 
how effectual that sort of small shot was from him, I 
need not say to anybody who remembers his infirmity 
of stammering, and his dexterous management of it 
for purposes of light and shade. He was often able to 
train the roll of stammers into settling upon the words 
immediately preceding the effective one; by which 
means the key-note of the jest or sarcasm, benefiting 
by the sudden liberation of his embargoed voice, was 
delivered with the force of a pistol shot. That 
stammer was worth an annuity to him as an ally of 
his wit. Firing under cover of that advantage, he did 
triple execution ; for, in the first place, the distressing 
sympathy of the hearers with Azs distress of utterance 
won for him unavoidably the silence of deep attention ; 
and then, whilst he had us all hoaxed into this attitude 
of mute suspense by an appearance of distress that he 
perhaps did not really feel, down came a plunging shot 
into the very thick of us, with ten times the effect it 
would else have had. If his stammering, however, 


> sometimes it’ 


often did him true ‘* yeoman’s service,’ 
led him into scrapes. Coleridge told me of a ludicrous 
embarrassment which it caused him at Hastings. Lamb 


had been medically advised to a course of sea-bathing ; 


200 CHARLES LAMB. 


and accordingly at the door of his bathing machine, 
whilst he stood shivering with cold, two stout fellows 
laid hold of him, one at each shoulder, like heraldic 
supporters; they waited for the word of command 
from their principal, who began the following oration 
to them: “* Hear me, men! Take notice of this—I 
am to be dipped.” What more he would have said is 
unknown to land or sea or bathing machines ; for 
having reached the word dipped, he commenced such 
a rolling fire of Di—di—di—di, that when at length 
he descended d@ plomb upon the full word dipped, the 
two men, rather tired of the long suspense, became 
satisfied that they had reached what lawyers call the 
‘“‘ operative” clause of the sentence; and both ex- 
claiming at once, *“* Oh yes, Sir, we’re quite aware of 
that,” down they plunged him into the sea. On 
emerging, Lamb sobbed so much from the cold, that 
he found no voice suitable to his indignation ; from 
necessity he seemed tranquil; and again addressing 
the men, who stood respectfully listening, he began 
thus: ‘* Men! is it possible to obtain your attention ? ” 
*¢ Oh surely, Sir, by all means.” ‘Then listen: once 
more [ tell you, | am to be di—di—di—’’— and then, 


with a burst of indignation, ‘“ dipped, I tell you,” 
** Oh decidedly, Sir,” rejoined the men, “ decidedly,” 
and down the stammerer went for the second time. 
Petrified with cold and wrath, once more Lamb made 
a feeble attempt at explanation —“* Grant me pa—pa— 
patience; is it mum—um—murder you me—me— 
mean? Again and a—ga—ga—gain, I tell you, I’m 
to be di—di—di—dipped,” now speaking furiously, 
with the voice of an injured man. ‘ Oh yes, Sir, the 


CHARLES LAMB. 201 


men replied, ‘* we know that, we fully understood it,” 
and for the third time down went Lamb into the sea. 
“* Oh limbs of Satan!” he said, on coming up for the 
third time, “it’s now too late; I tell you that I am — 
no, that I was — to be di—di—di—dipped only once.” 
Since the rencontres with Lamb at Coleridge’s, I 
had met him once or twice at literary dinner parties. 
One of these occyrred at the house of Messrs. ‘Taylor 
& Hessey, the publishers. I myself was suffering 
too much from illness at the time to take any pleasure 
in what passed, or to notice it with any vigilance of 
attention. Lamb, I remember, as usual, was full of 
gayety; and as usual he rose too rapidly to the zenith 
of his gayety; for he shot upwards like a rocket, and, 
as usual, people said he was “tipsy.” To me Lamb 
never seemed intoxicated, but at most aérily elevated. 
He never talked nonsense, which is a great point 
gained ; nor polemically, which is a greater; for it is 
a dreadful thing to find a drunken man bent upon con- 
verting oneself; nor sentimentally, which is greatest of 
all. You can stand a man’s fraternizing with you ; or 
if he swears an eternal friendship, only once in an 
hour, you do not think of calling the police ; but once 
in every three minutes is too much. Lamb did none 
of these things; he was always rational, quiet, and 
gentlemanly in his habits. Nothing memorable, 1 am 
sure, passed upon this occasion, which was in Novem- 
ber of 1821; and yet the dinner was memorable by 
means of one fact not discovered until many years 
later. Amongst the company, all literary men, sate a 
murderer, and a murderer of a freezing class; cool, 
calculating, wholesale in his operations, and moving all 


202 CHARLES LAMB. 


along under the advantages of unsuspecting domestic 
confidence and domestic opportunities. Thiswas Mr. 
Wainwright, who was subsequently brought to trial, but 
not for any of his murders, and transported for life. 
The story has been told both by Sergeant Talfourd, in 
the second volume of these ‘¢ Final Memoirs,” and 
previously by Sir Edward B. Lytton. Both havebeen 
much blamed for the use made of this extraordinary 
case; but we know not why. In itself it is a most 
remarkable case for more reasons than one. It is 
remarkable for the appalling revelation which it makes 
of power spread through the hands of people not liable 
to suspicion, for purposes the most dreadful. It is 
remarkable also by the contrast which existed in this 
case between the murderer’s appearance and the 
terrific purposes with which he was always dallying. 
He was a contributor to a journal in which [I also had 
written several papers. This formed a shadowy link 
between us; and, ill as I was, I looked more attentive- 
ly at him than at anybody else. Yet there were 
several men of wit and genius present, amongst whom 
Lamb (as I have said) and Thomas Hood, Hamilton 
Reynolds, and Allan Cunningham. But them I already 
knew, whereas Mr. W. I now saw for the first time and 
the last. What interested me about him was this, the 
papers which had been pointed out to me as his, 
(signed Janus Weathercock, Vinkbooms, &c.) were 
written in a spirit of coxcombry that did not so much 
disgust as amuse. ‘The writer could not conceal the 
ostentatious pleasure which he took in the luxurious 
fittings-up of his rooms, in the fancied splendor of his 
bijouterie, &c. Yet it was easy for a man of any 


CHARLES LAMB. 203 


experience to read two facts in all this idle étalage ; 
one being, that his finery was but of a second-rate 
order ; the other, that he was a parvenu, not at home 
even amongst his second-rate splendor. So far there 
*s papers from 


was nothing to distinguish Mr. W 
the papers of other triflers. But in this point there 
was, viz., that in his judgments upon the great Italian 
masters of painting, Da Vinci, Titian, &c., there 
seemed a tone of sincerity and of native sensibility, as 
in one who spoke from himself, and was not merely a 
copier from books. This it was that interested me ; 
as also his reviews of the chief Italian engravers, 
Morghen, Volpato, &c.; not for the manner, which 
overflowed with levities and impertinence, but for the 
substance of his judgments in those cases where I 
happened to have had an opportunity of judging for 
myself. Here arose also a claim upon Lamb’s atten- 
tion ; for Lamb and his sister had a deep feeling. for 
what was excellent in painting. Accordingly Lamb 
paid him a great deal of attention, and continued 
to speak of him for years with an interest that seemed 
disproportioned to his pretensions. This might be 
owing in part to an indirect compliment paid to Miss 
Lamb in one of W *s papers; else his appearance 
would rather have repelled Lamb; it was common- 
place, and better suited to express the dandyism which 
overspread the surface of -his manner, than the unaf- 
fected sensibility which apparently lay in his nature. 
Dandy or not, however, this man, on account of the 
schism in his papers, so much amiable puppyism on 
one side, so much deep feeling on the other, (feeling, 
applied to some of the grandest objects that earth has 


204 CHARLES LAMB. 


to show,) did really move a trifle of interest in me, on 
a day when I hated the face of man and woman. Yet 
again, if I had known this man for the murderer that 
even then he was, what sudden loss of interest, what 
sudden growth of another interest, would have changed 
the face of that party! Trivial creature, that didst 
carry thy dreadful eye kindling with perpetual trea- 
sons! Dreadful creature, that didst carry thy trivial 
eye, mantling with eternal levity, over the sleeping 
surfaces of confiding household life—oh, what a 
revolution for man wouldst thou have accomplished 
had thy deep wickedness prospered! What was that 
wickedness? In a few words I will say. 

At this time (October, 1848) the whole British island 
is appalled by a new chapter in the history of poisoning. 
Locusta in ancient Rome, Madame Brinvilliers in Paris, 
were people of original genius: not in any new artifice 
of toxicology, not in the mere management of poisons, 
was the audacity of their genius displayed. No; but 
in profiting by domestic openings for murder, un- © 
suspected through their very atrocity. Such an open- 
ing was made some years ago by those who saw the 
possibility of founding purses for parents upon the 
murder of their children. This was done upon a 
larger scale than had been suspected, and upon a 
plausible pretence. To bury a corpse is costly ; but of 
a hundred children only a few, in the ordinary course 
of mortality, will die within a given time. Five shil- 
lings a-piece will produce £25 annually, and thaé will 
bury a considerable number. On this principle arose 
Infant Burial Societies. For a few shillings annually, 
a parent could secure a funeral for every child. If the 


CHARLES LAMB. 205 


child died, a few guineas fell due to the parent, and the 
funeral was accomplished without cost of Ais. But on 
this arose the suggestion — Why not execute an insur- 
ance of this nature twenty times over? One single 
insurance pays for the funeral —the other nineteen are 
so much clear gain, a lucro ponatur, for the parents. 
Yes; but on the supposition that the child died! twenty 
are no better than one, unless they are gathered into 
the garner. Now, if the child died naturally, all was 
right; but how, if the child did not die? Why, clearly 
this, —the child that can die, and won’t die, may be 
made to die. There are many ways of doing that; and 
it is shocking to know, that, according to recent dis- 
coveries, poison is comparatively a very merciful mode 
of murder. Six years ago a dreadful communication 
was made to the public by a medical man, viz., that 
three thousand children were annually burned to death 
under circumstances showing too clearly that they 
had been left by their mothers with the means and the 
-temptations to set themselves on fire in her absence. 
But more shocking, because more lingering, are the 
deaths by artificial appliances of wet, cold, hunger, bad 
diet, and disturbed sleep, to the frail constitutions of 
children. By that machinery it is, and not by poison, 
that the majority qualify themselves for claiming the 
funeral allowances. Here, however, there occur to 
any man, on reflection, two eventual restraints on the 
extension of this domestic curse : — Ist, as there is no 
pretext for wanting more than one funeral on account 
of one child, any insurances beyond one are in them- 
selves a ground of suspicion. Now, if any plan were 
devised for securing the publication of such insurances, 


205 CHARLES LAMB. 


the suspicions would travel as fast as the grounds for 
them. 2dly, it occurs, that eventually the evil checks 
itself, since a society established on the ordinary rates 
of mortality would be ruined when a murderous stimu- 
lation was applied to that rate too extensively. Still it 
is certain that, for a season, this atrocity has prospered 
in manufacturing districts for some years, and more 
recently, as judicial investigations have shown, in one 
agricultural district of Essex. Now, Mr. W s 
scheme of murder was, in its outline, the very same, 
but not applied to the narrow purpose of obtaining 
burials from a public fund. He persuaded, for instance, 
two beautiful young ladies, visitors in his family, to 
insure their lives for a short period of two years. This 
insurance was repeated in several different offices, until 
a sum of £18,000 had been secured in the event of 
their deaths within the two years. Mr. W took 
care that they should die, and very suddenly, within 
that period ; and then, having previously secured from 


his victims an assignment to himself of this claim, he 
endeavored to make this assignment available. But the 
offices, which had vainly endeavored to extract from 
the young ladies any satisfactory account of the rea- 
sons for this limited insurance, had their suspicions at 
last strongly roused. One office had recently experi- 
enced a case of the same nature, in which also the 
young lady had been poisoned by the man in whose 
behalf she had effected the insurance; all the offices 
declined to pay ; actions at law arose; in the course of 
the investigation which followed, Mr. W *s charac- 
ter was fully exposed. Finally, in the midst of the 
embarrassments which ensued, he committed forgery , 
and was transported. 


CIIARLES LAMB. 207 


From this Mr. W , some few days afterwards, I 
received an invitation to a dinner party, expressed in 
terms that were obligingly earnest. He mentioned the 
names of his principal guests, and amongst them rested 
most upon those of Lamb and Sir David Wilkie. From 
an accident I was unable to attend, and greatly regretted 
it. Sir David one might rarely happen to see, except at 
a crowded party. But as regarded Lamb, | was sure 
to see him or to hear of him again in some way or 
other within a short time. This opportunity, in fact, 
offered itself within a month through the kindness of 
the Lambs themselves. They had heard of my being 
in solitary lodgings, and insisted on my coming to dine 
with them, which more than once I did in the winter of 
1821 - 22. 

The mere reception by the Lambs was so full of 
goodness and hospitable feeling, that it kindled anima- 
tion in the most cheerless or torpid of invalids. 1 can- 
not imagine that any memorabilia occurred during the 
visit ; but I will use the time that would else be lost 
upon the settling of that point, in putting down any 
triviality that occurs to my recollection. Both Lamb 
and myself had a furious love for nonsense, headlong 
nonsense. Excepting Professor Wilson, I have known 
nobody who had the same passion to the same extent. 
And things of that nature better illustrate the realities 
of Lamb’s social life than the gravities, which weighing 
so sadly on his solitary hours he sought to banish from 
his moments of relaxation. 

There were no strangers ; Charles Lamb, his sister, 
and myself made up the party. Even this was done 
in kindness. ‘They knew that I should have been 


208 CHARLES LAMB. 


oppressed by an effort such as must be made in the 
society of strangers ; and they placed me by their own 
fireside, where I could say as little or as much as I 
pleased. 

We dined about five o’clock, and it was one of the 
hospitalities inevitable to the Lambs, that any game 
which they might receive from rural friends in the 
course of the week, was reserved for the day of a 
friend’s dining with them. 

In regard to wine, Lamb and myself had the same 
habit — perhaps it rose to the dignity of a principle — 
viz., to take a great deal during dinner — none after it. 
Consequently, as Miss Lamb (who drank only water) 
retired almost with the dinner itself, nothing remained 
for men of our principles, the rigor of which we had 
illustrated by taking rather too much of old port before 
the cloth was drawn, except talking ; amcebean collo- 
quy, or, in Dr. Johnson’s phrase, a dialogue of “ brisk 
reciprocation.”’ But this was impossible ; over Lamb, 
at this period of his life, there passed regularly, after 
taking wine, a brief eclipse of sleep. It descended 
upon him as softly as a shadow. In a gross person, 
laden with superfluous flesh, and sleeping heavily, this 
would have been disagreeable ; but in Lamb, thin even 
to meagreness, spare and wiry as an Arab of the desert, 
or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by scholastic vigils, the 
affection of sleep seemed rather a network of aérial 
gossamer than of earthly cobweb— more like a golden 
haze falling upon him gently from the heavens than a 
cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. Motionless in 
his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as scarcely to | 
seem certainly alive, he presented the image of repose 


CHARLES LAMB. 209 


midway between life and death, like the repose of 
sculpture ; and to one who knew his history a repose 
affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal 
storms of his life. [have heard more persons than I 
can now distinctly recall, observe of Lamb when sleep- 
ing, that his countenance in that state assumed an 
expression almost seraphic, from its intellectual beauty 
of outline, its childlike simplicity, and its benignity. 
It could not be called a transfiguration that sleep had 
worked in his face; for the features wore essentially 
the same expression when waking ; but sleep spiritual- 
ized that expression, exalted it, and also harmonized it. 
Much of the change lay in that last process. The eyes 
it was that disturbed the unity of effect in Lamb’s 
waking face. ‘They gave a restlessness to the charac- 
ter of his intellect, shifting, like northern lights, through 
every mode of combination with fantastic playfulness, 
and sometimes by fiery gleams obliterating for the mo- 
ment that pure light of benignity which was the pre- 
dominant reading on his features. Some people have 
supposed that Lamb had Jewish blood in his veins, 
which seemed to account for his gleaming eyes. It 
might be so; but this notion found little countenance in 
Lamb’s own way of treating the gloomy medieval tra- 
ditions propagated throughout Europe about the Jews, 
and their secret enmity to Christian races. Lamb, in- 
deed, might not be more serious than Shakspeare is 
supposed to have been in his Shylock ; yet he spoke at 
times as from a station of wilful bigotry, and seemed 
(whether laughingly or not) to sympathize with the 
barbarous Christian superstitions upon the pretended 
bloody practices of the Jews, and of the early Jewish 
14 


210 CHARLES LAMB. 


physicians. Being himself a Lincoln man, he treated 
Sir Hugh? of Lincoln, the young child that suffered 
death by secret assassination in the Jewish quarter 
rather than suppress his daily anthems to the Virgin, as 
a true historical personage on the rolls of martyrdom; 
careless that this fable, like that of the apprentice mur- 
dered out of jealousy by his master, the architect, had 
destroyed its own authority by ubiquitous diffusion. 
All over Europe the same legend of the murdered ap- 
prentice and the martyred child reappears under differ- 
ent names — so that in effect the verification of the tale 
is none at all, because it is unanimous; is too narrow, 
because it is too impossibly broad. Lamb, however, 
though it was often hard to say whether he were not 
secretly laughing, swore to the truth of all these old 
fables, and treated the liberalities of the present gene- 
ration on such points as mere fantastic and effeminate 
affectations, which, no doubt, they often are as regards 
the sincerity of those who profess them. The bigotry, 
which it pleased his fancy to assume, he used like a 
sword against the Jew, as the official weapon of the 
Christian, upon the same principle that a Capulet would 
have drawn upon a Montague, without conceiving it 
any duty of his to rip up the grounds of so ancient a 
quarrel ; it was a feud handed down to him by his 
ancestors, and it was their business to see that originally 
it had been an honest feud. I cannot yet believe that 
Lamb, if seriously aware of any family interconnection 
with Jewish blood, would, even in jest, have held that 
one-sided language. More probable it is, that the fiery 
eye recorded not any alliance with Jewish blood, but 
that disastrous alliance with insanity which tainted his 
own life, and laiddesolate his sister’s. 


CHARLES LAMB. 211 


On awakening from his brief slumber, Lamb sat for 
some time in profound silence, and then, with the most 
startling rapidity, sang out — ‘ Diddle, diddle, dump- 
kins ;”’ not looking at me, but as if soliloquizing. For 
five minutes he relapsed into the same deep silence ; 
from which again he started up into the same abrupt 
utterance of — “ Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.” I could not 
help laughing aloud at the extreme energy of this sud- 
den communication, contrasted with the deep silence 
that went before and followed. Lamb smilingly begged 
to know what I was laughing at, and with a look of as 
much surprise as if it were I that had done something 
unaccountable, and not himself. I told him (as was the 
truth) that there had suddenly occurred to me the pos- 
sibility of my being in some future period or other 
called on to give an account of this very evening before 
some literary committee. The committee might say 
to me — (supposing the case that I outlived him) — 
* You dined with Mr. Lamb in January, 1822; now, 
can you remember any remark or memorable observa- 
tion which that celebrated man made before or after 
dinner?” 

las respondent. ‘ Oh yes, I can.” 

Com. ‘ What was it? ” 

Resp. ‘ Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.”’ 

Com. ‘‘ And was this his only observation ? Did Mr. 
Lamb not strengthen this remark by some other of the 
same nature ?” 

Resp. ‘* Yes, he did.” 

Com. ** And what was it?” 

Resp. ‘‘ Diddle, diddle, dumpkins.” 

Com. ‘*‘ What is your secret opinion of Dumpkins ? 


212 CHARLES LAMB. 


Do you conceive Dumpkins to have been a thing or a 
person ? ” 

Resp. “* I conceive Dumpkins to have been a person, 
having the rights of a person.” 

Com. ‘Capable, for instance, of suing and being 
sued ? ” 

Resp. “ Yes, capable of both; though I have reason 
to think there would have been very little use in suing 
Dumpkins.” 

Com. ** How so? Are the committee to understand 
that you, the respondent, in your own case, have found 
it a vain speculation, countenanced only by visionary 
lawyers, to sue Dumpkins ?”’ 

Resp. “No; I never lost a shilling by Dumpkins, 
the reason for which may be that Dumpkins never 
owed me a shilling; but from his prenomen of ‘ diddle, 
I apprehend that he was too well acquainted with joint- 
stock companies ! ”’ 

Com. ‘ And your opinion is, that he may have did- 
dled Mr. Lamb?” 

Resp. “ I conceive it to be not unlikely.” 

Com. ‘** And, perhaps, from Mr. Lamb’s pathetic re- 
iteration of his name, ‘ Diddle, diddle,’ you would be 
disposed to infer that Dumpkins had practised his did- 
dling talents upon Mr. L. more than once? ” 

Resp. ‘1 think it probable.” 

Lamb laughed, and brightened up; tea was an- 
nounced; Miss Lamb returned. The cloud had passed 
away from Lamb’s spirits, and again he realized the 
pleasure of evening, which, in his apprehension, was 
so essential to the pleasure of literature. 

On the table lay a copy of Wordsworth, in two 


CHARLES LAMB, 213 


volumes; it was the edition of Longman, printed about 
the time of Waterloo. Wordsworth was held in little 
consideration, I believe, amongst the house of Long- 
man; at any rate, their editions of his works were got 
up in the most slovenly manner. In particular, the 
table of contents was drawn up like a short-hand bill 
of parcels. By accident the book lay open at a part of 
this table, where the sonnet beginning — 


* Alas! what boots the long laborious quest ” — 
had been entered with mercantile speed, as — 


* Alas! what boots, ” 


*‘ Yes,”’ said Lamb, reading this entry in a dolorous 
tone of voice, “he may well say that. I paid Hoby 
three guineas for a pair that tore like blotting paper, 
when I was leaping a ditch to escape a farmer that 
pursued me with a pitch-fork for trespassing. But 
why should W. wear boots in Westmoreland? Pray, 
advise him to patronize shoes.” 

The mercurialities of Lamb were infinite, and 
always uttered in a spirit of absolute recklessness for 
the quality or the prosperity of the sally. It seemed 
to liberate his spirits from some burthen of blackest 
melancholy which oppressed it, when he had thrown off 
a jest: he would not stop one instant to improve it; 
nor did he care the value of a straw whether it were 
good enough to be remembered, or so mediocre as to 
extort high moral indignation from a collector who re- 
fused to receive into his collection of jests and puns 
any that were not felicitously good or revoltingly bad. 

After tea, Lamb read to me a number of beautiful 


214 CHARLES LAMB. 


compositions, which he had himself taken the trouble to 
copy out into a blank paper folio from unsuccessful 
authors. Neglected people in every class won the 
sympathy of Lamb. One of the poems, I remember, 
was a very beautiful sonnet from a volume recently 
published by Lord Thurlow — which, and Lamb’s just 
remarks upon it, | could almost repeat verbatim at this 
moment, nearly twenty-seven years later, if your limits 
would allow me. But these, you tell me, allow of no 
such thing; at the utmost they allow only twelve lines 
more. Now all the world knows that the sonnet itself 
would require fourteen lines; but take fourteen from 
twelve, and there remains very little, I fear; besides 
which, | am afraid two of my twelve are already ex- 
hausted. This forces me to interrupt my account of 
Lamb’s reading, by reporting the very accident that did 
interrupt it in fact; since that no less characteristically 
expressed Lamb’s peculiar spirit of kindness, (always 
quickening itself towards the ill-used or the down- 
trodden,) than it had previously expressed itself in his 
choice of obscure readings. ‘Two ladies came in, one 
of whom at least had sunk in the scale of worldly con- 
sideration. ‘They were ladies who would not have 
found much recreation in literary discussions ; elderly, 
and habitually depressed. On their account, Lamb 
proposed whist, and in that kind effort to amuse them, 
which naturally drew forth some momentary gayeties 
from himself, but not of a kind to impress themselves 
on the recollection, the evening terminated.” 


We have left ourselves no room for a special ex- 
amination of Lamb’s writings, some of which were 


CHARLES LAMB. 215 


failures, and some were so memorably beautiful as to 
be uniques in their class. The character of Lamb it is, 
and the life-struggle of Lamb, that must fix the atten- 
tion of many, even amongst those wanting in sensibility 
to his intellectual merits. This character and this 
struggle, as we have already observed, impress many 
traces of themselves upon Lamb’s writings. Even in 
that view, therefore, they have a ministerial value ; but 
separately, for themselves, they have an independent 
value of the highest order. Upon this point we gladly 
adopt the eloquent words’ of Sergeant Talfourd : — 


‘¢ The sweetness of Lamb’s character, breathed through his 
writings, was felt even by strangers; but its heroic aspect 
was unguessed even by many of his friends. Let them now 
consider it, and ask if the annals of self-sacrifice can show 
anything in human action and endurance more lovely than its 
self-devotion exhibits? It was not merely that he saw, through 
the ensanguined cloud of misfortune which had fallen upon 
his family, the unstained excellence of his sister, whose mad- 
ness had caused it ; that he was ready to take her to his own 
home with reverential affection, and cherish her through life ; 
and he gave up, for her sake, all meaner and more selfish love, 
and all the hopes which youth blends with the passion which 
disturbs and ennobles it; not even that he did all this cheer- 
fully, without pluming himself upon his brotherly nobleness 
as a virtue, or seeking to repay himself (as some uneasy 
martyrs do) by small instalments of long repining ; but 
that he carried the spirit of the hour in which he first knew 
and took his course to his last. So far from thinking that 
his sacrifice of youth and love to his sister gave him a license 
to follow his own caprice at the expense of her feelings, even 
in the lightest matters, he always wrote and spoke of her as 
his wiser self, his generous benefactress, of whose protecting 
care he was scarcely worthy.”’ 


216 CHARLES LAMB. 


It must be remembered, also, which the Sergeant 
does not overlook, that Lamb’s efforts for the becoming 
support of his sister lasted through a period of forty 
years. Twelve years before his death, the munificence 
of the India House, by granting him a liberal retiring 
allowance, had placed his own support under shelter 
from accidents of any kind. But this died with him- 
self; and he could not venture to suppose that, in the 
event of his own death, the India House would grant 
to his sister the same allowance as by custom is 
granted to a wife. This they did; but not venturing 
to calculate upon such nobility of patronage, Lamb 
had applied himself through life to the saving of a 
provision for his sister under any accident to himself. 
And this he did with a persevering prudence, so little 
known in the literary class, amongst a continued tenor 
of generosities, often so princely as to be scarcely 
known in any class, 

Was this man, so memorably good by life-long 
sacrifice of himself, in any profound sense a Chris- 
tian? ‘The impression is, that he was not. We, from 
private communications with him, can undertake to say 
that, according to his knowledge and opportunities for 
the study of Christianity, he was. What has injured 
Lamb on this point is, that his early opinions (which, 
however, from the first were united with the deepest 
piety) are read by the inattentive, as if they had been 
the opinions of his mature days ; secondly, that he had 
few religious persons amongst his friends, which made 
him reserved in the expression of his own views; 
thirdly, that in any case where he altered opinions for 
the better, the credit of the improvement is assigned to 


CHARLES LAMB. 217 


Coleridge. Lamb, for example, beginning life as a 
Unitarian, in not many years became a Trinitarian. 
Coleridge passed through the same changes in the 
same order; and, here, at least, Lamb is supposed 
simply to have obeyed the influence, confessedly great, 
of Coleridge. This, on our own knowledge of Lamb’s 
views, we pronounce to be an error. And the follow- 
ing extracts from Lamb’s letters will show, not only 
that he was religiously disposed on impulses self- 
derived, but that, so far from obeying the bias of 
Coleridge, he ventured, on this one subject, firmly as 
regarded the matter, though humbly as regarded the 
manner, affectionately to reprove Coleridge. 

In a letter to Coleridge, written in 1797, the year 
after his first great affliction, he says : 


** Coleridge, I have not one truly elevated character among 
my acquaintance ; not one Christian ; not one but undervalues 
Christianity. Singly, what am I to dot Wesley — [have 
you read his life? ]— was not he an elevated character? 
Wesley has said religion was not a solitary thing. Alas! it 
is necessarily so with me, or next to solitary. “Tis true you 
write to me; but correspondence by letter and personal inti- 
macy are widely different. Do, do write to me; and do 
some good to my mind—already how much ‘ warped and 
relaxed’ by the world! ”’ 


In a letter written about three months previously, he 
had not scrupled to blame Coleridge at some length for 
audacities of religious speculation, which seemed to 
him at war with the simplicities of pure religion. He 
says : 

‘* Do continue to write tome. I read your letters with my 
sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Espe- 


218 CHARLES LAMB. 


cially they please us two when you talk in a religious strain. 
Not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom 
of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to 
the conceits of pagan philosophy than consistent with the 
humility of genuine piety.” 


Then, after some instances of what he blames, he 
Says : 


‘¢ Be not angry with me, Coleridge. I wish not to cavil ; 
I know [ cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of 
that humility which best becometh the Christian character. 
God, in the New Testament, our best guide, is represented to 
us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a 
parent; and, in my poor mind, ’tis best for us so to consider 
him as our heavenly Father, and our best friend, without 
indulging too bold conceptions of his character.” 


About a month later, he says: 


‘* Few but laugh at me for reading my Testament. ‘They 
talk a language I understand not; I conceal sentiments that 
would be a puzzle to them.”’ 


We see by this last quotation where it was that 
Lamb originally sought for consolation. We person- 
ally can vouch that, at a maturer period; when he was 
approaching his fiftieth year, no change had affected 
his opinions upon that point; and, on the other hand, 
that no changes had occurred in his needs for consola- 
tion, we see, alas! in the records of his life. Whither, 
indeed, could he fly for comfort, if not to his Bible? 
And to whom was the Bible an indispensable resource, 
if not to Lamb? We do not undertake to say, that in 
his knowledge of Christianity he was everywhere pro- 
found or consistent, but he was always earnest in his 


CHARLES LAMB. 219 


aspirations after its spiritualities, and had an apprehen- 
sive sense of its power. 

Charles Lamb is gone; his life was a continued 
struggle in the service of love the purest, and within 
a sphere visited by little of contemporary applause. 
Even his intellectual displays won but a narrow sym- 
pathy at any time, and in his earlier period were 
saluted with positive derision and contumely on the 
few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire 
neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All 
merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, 
reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a_ higher 
sensory ; reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged 
in a selecter audience. But the original obtuseness or 
vulgarity of feeling that thwarted Lamb’s just estima- 
tion in life, will continue to thwart its popular diffusion. 
There are even some that continue to regard him with 
the old hostility. And we, therefore, standing by the 
side of Lamb’s grave, seemed to hear, on one side, 
(but in abated tones,) strains of the ancient malice — 
‘‘ This man, that thought himself to be somebody, is 
dead —is buried —is forgotten!” and, on the other 
side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the solemnity 
of an anthem —‘“ This man, that thought himself to 
be nobody, is dead—is buried; his life has been 
searched ; and his memory is hallowed forever! ” 


“qk Dia: Opn se, oa 


EAP aa Fi brags hin maT? by ; fone PAV OU 
(pan eee 


ol 
Pee ake aa! H t Saal ah ae ae 
, ia 


af 


. : jad twiiu® hoverteil mode 


F eR Ce eee ad ates 


j a " ‘yy 
e » 


en . heat Aah scant aad Ib 
lat ola : i ga 
« a Tot 


Ai ¥ 4 / - i 

7 tr ry veion ie 
Len Verne) 

' 


é * ’ 
: Avy gah heed Nee PL) 


Pe Sate > : vere 


{ 
& 
f ' uF a tat ; of 
4 ef ' aT) 7 
it RARE, hs ar) ea 


NOTES. 


Note 1. Page 162. 


“ Scriptural’? we call it, because this element of thought, so 
indispensable to a profound philosophy of morals, is not simply 
more used in Scripture than elsewhere, but is so exclusively signifi- 
cant or intelligible amidst the correlative ideas of Scripture, as to 
be absolutely insusceptible of translation into classical Greek or 
classical Latin. It is disgraceful that more reflection has not been 
directed to the vast causes and consequences of so pregnant a truth. 


Notre2. Page 174. 


* Poor S. T. C.”’— The affecting expression by which Coleridge 
indicates himself in the few lines written during his last illness for 
an inscription upon his grave; lines ill constructed in point of 
diction and compression, but otherwise speaking from the depths of 
his heart. 


Nore 3. Page 193. 


It is right to remind the reader of this, for a reason applying 
forcibly to the present moment. Michelet has taxed Englishmen 
with yielding to national animosities in the case of Joan, having no 
plea whatever for that insinuation but the single one drawn from 
Shakspeare’s Henry VI. To this the answer is, first, that Shak- 
speare’s share in that trilogy is not nicely ascertained. Secondly, 
that M. Michelet forgot (or, which is far worse, not forgetting it, he 
dissembled) the fact, that in undertaking a series of dramas upon 
the basis avowedly of national chronicles, and for the very purpose 
of profiting by old traditionary recollections connected with ances- 


Q22 CHARLES LAMB. 


tral glories, it was mere lunacy to recast the circumstances at the 
bidding of antiquarian research, so as entirely to disturb these 
glories. Besides that, to Shakspeare’s age no such spirit of re- 
search had blossomed. Writing for the stage, a man would have 
risked Japidation by uttering a whisper in that direction. And; 
even if not, what sense could there have been in openly running 
counter to the very motive that had originally prompted that par- 
ticular class of chronicle plays? Thirdly, if one Englishman had, 
in a memorable situation, adopted the popular view of Joan’s con- 
duct, (popular as much in France as in England;) on the other 
hand, fifty years before M. Michelet was writing this flagrant injus- 
tice, another Englishman (viz., Southey) had, in an epic poem, 
reversed this mis-judgment, and invested the shepherd girl witha 
glory nowhere else accorded to her, unless indeed by Schiller. 
Fourthly, we are not entitled to view as an attack upon Joanna, 
what, in the worst construction, is but an unexamining adoption of 
the contemporary historical accounts. A poet or a dramatist is not 
responsible for the accuracy of chronicles. But what zs an attack 
upon Joan, being briefly the foulest and obscenest attempt ever 
made to stifle the grandeur of a great human struggle, viz., the 
French burlesque poem of La Pucelle— what memorable man was 
it that wrote that? Was he a Frenchman, or was he not? That 
M. Michelet should pretend to have forgotten this vilest of pasqui- 
nades, is more shocking to the general sense of justice than any 
special untruth as to Shakspeare can be to the particular nationality 
of an Englishman. 


Note 4. Page 210. 


The story which furnishes a basis to the fine ballad in Percy's 
Reliques, and to the Canterbury Tale of Chaucer’s Lady Abbess. 


GOETHE. 


Joun WoLFGANG VON GOETHE, a man of command- 
ing influence in the literature of modern Germany 
throughout the latter half of his long life, and possess- 
ing two separate claims upon our notice ; one in right 
of his own unquestionable talents ; and another much 
stronger, though less direct, arising out of his position, 
and the extravagant partisanship put forward on his 
behalf for the last forty years. The literary body in 
-all countries, and for reasons which rest upon a 
sounder basis than that of private jealousies, have 
always been disposed to a republican simplicity in all 
that regards the assumption of rank and_ personal 
pretensions. Valeat quantum valere potest, is the form 
of license to every man’s ambition, coupled with its 
caution. Let his influence and authority be commen- 
surate with his attested value; and, because no man 
in the present infinity of human speculation, and the 
present multiformity of human power, can hope for 
more than a very limited superiority, there is an end 


224 GOETHE. 


at once to all absolute dictatorship. The dictatorship 
in any case could be only relative, and in relation to a 
single department of art or knowledge ; and this for a 
reason stronger even than that already noticed, viz., 
the vast extent of the field on which the intellect is 
now summoned to employ itself. ‘That objection, as it 
applies only to the degree of the difficulty, might be 
met by a corresponding degree of mental energy ; 
such a thing may be supposed, at least. But another 
difficulty there is, of a profounder character, which 
cannot be so easily parried. ‘Those who have reflected 
at all upon the fine arts, know that power of one 
kind is often inconsistent, positively incompatible, with 
power of another kind. For example, the dramatic 
mind is incompatible with the epic. And though we 
should consent to suppose that some intellect might 
arise endowed upon a scale of such angelic compre- 
hensiveness, as to vibrate equally and indifferently 
towards either pole, still it is next to impossible, in the 
exercise and culture of the two powers, but some bias 
must arise which would give that advantage to the one 
over the other which the right arm has over the left. . 
But the supposition, the very case put, is baseless, and 
countenanced by no precedent. Yet, under this pre- 
vious difficulty, and with regard to a literature con- 
vulsed, if any ever was, by an almost total anarchy, 
it is a fact notorious to all who take an interest in 
Germany and its concerns, that Goethe did in one way 
or other, through the length and breadth of that vast 
country, establish a supremacy of influence wholly 
unexampled ; a supremacy indeed perilous in a less 
honorable man, to those whom he might chance to 


GOETHE. 225 


hate, and with regard to himself thus far unfortunate, 
that it conferred upon every work proceeding from his 
pen a sort of papal indulgence, an immunity from 
criticism, or even from the appeals of good sense, such 
as it is not wholesome that any man should enjoy. 
Yet we repeat that German literature was and is ina 
condition of total anarchy. With this solitary excep- 
tion, no name, even in the most narrow section of 
knowledge or of power, has ever been able in that 
country to challenge unconditional reverence ; whereas, 
with us and in France, name the science, name the art, 
and we will name the dominant professor ; a difference 
which partly arises out of the fact that England and 
France are governed in their opinions by two or three 
capital cities, whilst Germany looks for its leadership 
to as many cities as there are residenzen and universi- 
ties. For instance, the little territory with which 
Goethe was connected presented no less than two such 
public lights; Weimar, the residenz or privileged 
abode of the Grand Duke, and Jena, the university 
founded by that house. Partly, however, this differ- 
ence may be due to the greater restlessness, and to the 
greater energy as respects mere speculation, of the 
German mind. But no matter whence arising, or how 
interpreted, the fact is what we have described ; abso- 
lute confusion, the “ anarch old’ of Milton, is the one 
deity whose sceptre is there paramount; and yet there 
it was, in that very realm of chaos, that Goethe built 
his throne. ‘That he must have looked with trepidation 
and perplexity upon his wild empire and its “ dark 
foundations,” may be supposed. The tenure was 
uncertain to him as regarded its duration; to us it is 
15 


226 GOETHE. 


equally uncertain, and in fact mysterious, as regards 
its origin. Meantime the mere fact, contrasted with 
the general tendencies of the German literary world, 
is sufficient to justify a notice, somewhat circumstan- 
tial, of the man in whose favor, whether naturally by 
force of genius, or by accident concurring with in- 
trigue, so unexampled a result was effected. 

Goethe was born at noonday on the 28th of August, 
1749, in his father’s house at Frankfort on the Maine. 
The circumstances of his birth were thus far remarka- 
ble, that, unless Goethe’s vanity deceived him, they 
led to a happy revolution hitherto retarded by female 
delicacy falsely directed. From some error of the 
midwife who attended his mother, the infant Goethe 
appeared to be still-born. Sons there were as yet 
none from this marriage; everybody was therefore 
interested in the child’s life; and the panic which 
arose in consequence, having survived its immediate 
occasion, was improved into a public resolution, (for 
which no doubt society stood ready at that moment,) to 
found some course of public instruction from this time 
forward for those who undertook professionally the 
critical duties of accoucheur. ’ 

We have noticed the house in which Goethe was 
born, as well as the city. Both were remarkable, and 
fitted to leave lasting impressions upon a young person 
of sensibility. As to the city, its antiquity is not 
merely venerable, but almost mysterious ; towers were 
at that time to be found in the mouldering lines of 
its earliest defences, which belonged to the age of 
Charlemagne, or one still earlier; battlements adapted 
to a mode of warfare anterior even to that of feudalism 


GOETHE. 227 


or romance. The customs, usages, and local privileges 
of Frankfort, and the rural districts adjacent, were of 
a corresponding character. Festivals were annually 
celebrated at a short distance from the walls, which 
had descended from a dateless antiquity. Every thing 
which met the eye spoke the language of elder ages ; 
whilst the river on which the place was seated, its 
great fair, which still held the rank of the greatest in 
Christendom, and its connection with the throne of 
Cesar and his inauguration, by giving to Frankfort an 
interest and a public character in the eyes of all Ger- 
many, had the effect of countersigning, as it were, by 
state authority, the importance which she otherwise 
challenged to her ancestral distinctions. Fit house for 
such a city, and in due keeping with the general 
scenery, was that of Goethe’s father. It had in fact 
been composed out of two contiguous houses; that 
accident had made it spacious and rambling in its plan; 
whilst a further irregularity had grown out of the 
original difference in point of level between the cor- 
responding stories of the two houses, making it neces- 
sary to connect the rooms of the same suite by short 
flights of steps. Some of these features were no 
doubt removed by the recast of the house under the 
name of ‘ repairs,”’ (to evade a city bye-law,) after- 
wards executed by his father; but such was the house 
of Goethe’s infancy, and in all other circumstances of 
style and furnishing equally antique. 

The spirit of society in Frankfort, without a court, a 
university, or a learned body of any extent, or a 
resident nobility in its neighborhood, could not be 
expected to display any very high standard of polish. 


228 GOETHE, 


Yet, on the other hand, as an independent city, gov- 
erned by its own separate laws and tribunals, (that 
privilege of autonomy so dearly valued by ancient 
Greece,) and possessing besides a resident corps of 
jurisprudents and of agents in various ranks for man- 
aging the interests of the German emperor and other 
princes, Frankfort had the means within herself of 
giving a liberal tone to the pursuits of her superior 
citizens, and of cooperating in no_ inconsiderable 
degree with the general movement of the times, 
political or intellectual. ‘The memoirs of Goethe 
himself, and in particular the picture there given of 
his own family, as well as other contemporary glimpses 
of German domestic society in those days, are suffi- 
cient to show that much knowledge, much true culti- 
vation of mind, much sound refinement of taste, were 
then distributed through the middle classes of German 
society ; meaning by that very indeterminate expres- 
sion those classes which for Frankfort composed the 
aristocracy, viz., all who had daily leisure, and regular 
funds for employing it to advantage. It is not neces- 
sary to add, because that is a fact applicable to all 
stages of society, that Frankfort presented many and 
various specimens of original talent, moving upon all 
directions of human speculation. 

Yet, with this general allowance made for the 
capacities of the place, it is too evident that, for the 
most part, they lay inert and undeveloped. In many 
respects Frankfort resembled an English cathedral 
city, according to the standard of such places seventy 
years ago, not, that is to say, like Carlisle in this day, 
where a considerable manufacture exists, but like 


GOETHE. 229 


Chester as it is yet. The chapter of a cathedral, the 
resident ecclesiastics attached to the duties of so large 
an establishment, men always well educated, and gen- 
erally having families, compose the original nucleus, 
around which soon gathers all that part of the local 
gentry who, for any purpose, whether of education for 
their children, or of social enjoyment for themselves, 
seek the advantages of a town. Hither resort all the 
timid old ladies who wish for conversation, or other 
forms of social amusement; hither resort the valetudi- 
narians, male or female, by way of commanding 
superior medical advice at a cost not absolutely ruinous 
to themselves; and multitudes besides, with narrow 
incomes, to whom these quiet retreats are so many 
cities of refuge. 

Such, in one view, they really are; and yet in 
another they have a vicious constitution. Cathedral 
cities in England, imperial cities without manufactures 
in Germany, are all in an improgressive condition. 
The public employments of every class in such places 
continue the same from generation to generation. 
The amount of superior families oscillates rather than 
changes; that is, it fluctuates within fixed limits ; and, 
for all inferior families, being composed either of shop- 
keepers or of menial servants, they are determined by 
the number, or, which, on a large average, is the 
same, by the pecuniary power, of their employers. 
Hence it arises, that room is made for one man, in 
whatever line of dependence, only by the death of 
another; and the constant increments of the population 
are carried off into other cities. Not less is the differ- 
ence of such cities as regards the standard of manners. 


230 GOETHE. 


How striking is the soft and urbane tone of the lower 
orders in a cathedral city, or in a watering place 
dependent upon ladies, contrasted with the bold, often 
insolent, demeanor of a self-dependent artisan or muti- 
nous mechanic of Manchester and Glasgow. 

Children, however, are interested in the state of 
society around them, chiefly as it affects their parents. 
Those of Goethe were respectable, and perhaps tolera- 
bly representative of the general condition in their own 
rank. An English authoress of great talent, in her 
Characteristics of Goethe, has too much countenanced 
the notion that he owed his intellectual advantages 
exclusively to his mother. Of this there is no proof. 
His mother wins more esteem from the reader of this 
day, because she was a cheerful woman, of serene 
temper, brought into advantageous comparison with a 
husband much older than herself, whom circumstances 
had rendered moody, fitful, sometimes capricious, and 
confessedly obstinate in that degree which Pope has 
taught us to think connected with inveterate error: 


“ Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,” 


unhappily presents an association too often actually 
occurring in nature, to leave much chance for error in 
presuming either quality from the other. And, in fact, 
Goethe’s father was so uniformly obstinate in pressing 
his own views upon all who belonged to him, whenever 
he did come forward in an attitude of activity, that his 
family had much reason to be thankful for the rarity of 
such displays. Fortunately for them, his indolence 
neutralized his obstinacy. And the worst shape in 
which his troublesome temper showed itself, was in 


GOETHE. 231 


what concerned the religious reading of the family. 
Once begun, the worst book as well as the best, the 
longest no less than the shortest, was to be steadfastly 
read through to the last word of the last volume; no 
excess of yawning availed to obtain a reprieve, not, 
adds his son, though he were himself the leader of the 
yawners. As an illustration, he mentions Bowyer’s 
History of the Popes; which awful series of records, 
the catacombs, as it were, in the palace of history, 
were actually traversed from one end to the other of 
the endless suzte by the unfortunate house of Goethe. 
Allowing, however, for the father’s unamiableness in 
this one point, upon all intellectual ground both parents 
seem to have met very much upon a level. Two 
illustrations may suffice, one of which occurred during 
the infancy of Goethe. The science of education was 
at that time making its first rude motions towards an 
ampler development; and, amongst other reforms then 
floating in the general mind, was one for eradicating 
the childish fear of ghosts, &c. The young Goethes, 
as it happened, slept not in separate beds only, but in 
separate rooms; and not unfrequently the poor chil- 
dren, under the stinging terrors of their lonely situa- 
tion, stole away from their “forms,” to speak in the 
hunter’s phrase, and sought to rejoin each other. But 
in these attempts they were liable to surprises from the 
enemy ; papa and mamma were both on the alert, and 
often intercepted the young deserter by a cross march 
or an ambuscade ; in which cases each had a separate 
policy for enforcing obedience. The father, upon his 
general system of ‘ perseverance,” compelled the 
fugitive back to his quarters, and, in effect, exhorted 


232 GOETHE. 


him to persist in being frightened out of his wits. To 
his wife’s gentle heart that course appeared cruel, and 
she reclaimed the delinquent by bribes; the peaches 
which her garden walls produced being the fund from 
which she chiefly drew her supplies for this branch of 
the secret service. What were her winter bribes, 
when the long nights would seem to lie heaviest on the 
exchequer, is not said. Speaking seriously, no man 
of sense can suppose that a course of suffering from 
terrors the most awful, under whatever influence sup- 
ported, whether under the naked force of compulsion, 
or of that connected with bribes, could have any final 
effect in mitigating the passion of awe, connected, by 
our very dreams, with the shadowy and the invisible, 
or in tranquillizing the infantine imagination. 

A second illustration involves a great moral event 
in the history of Goethe, as it was, in fact, the first 
occasion of his receiving impressions at war with his 
religious creed. Piety is so beautiful an ornament of 
the youthful mind, doubt or distrust so unnatural a 
growth from confiding innocence, that an infant free- 
thinker is heard of not so much with disgust as with 
perplexity. A sense of the ludicrous is apt to inter- 
mingle ; and we lose our natural horror of the result 
in wonder at its origin. Yet in this instance there is 
no room for doubt; the fact and the occasion are both 
on record; there can be no question about the date ; 
and, finally, the accuser is no other than the accused. 
Goethe’s own pen it is which proclaims, that already, 
in the early part of his seventh year, his reliance upon 
God as a moral governor had suffered a violent shock, 
was shaken, if not undermined. On the Ist of No- 


GOETHE, 288 


vember, 1755, occurred the great earthquake at Lis- 
bon. Upon a double account, this event occupied the 
thoughts of all Europe for an unusual term of time; 
both as an expression upon a larger scale than usual of 
the mysterious physical agency concerned in earth- 
quakes, and also for the awful human tragedy! which 
attended either the earthquake itself, or its immediate 
sequel in the sudden irruption of the Tagus. Sixty 
thousand persons, victims to the dark power in its first 
or its second avatar, attested the Titanic scale upon 
which it worked. Here it was that the shallow piety 
of the Germans found a stumbling-block. Those who 
have read any circumstantial history of the physical 
signs which preceded this earthquake, are aware that 
in England and Northern Germany many singular 
phenomena were observed, more or less manifestly 
connected with the same dark agency which termi- 
nated at Lisbon, and running before this final catastro- 
phe at times so accurately varying with the distances, 
as to furnish something like a scale for measuring the 
velocity with which it moved. ‘These German phe- 
nomena, circulated rapidly over all Germany by the 
journals of every class, had seemed to give to the 
Germans a nearer and more domestic interest in the 
great event, than belonged to them merely in their 


1 Of this no picture can ever hope to rival that hasty one sketched 
in the letter of the chaplain to the Lisbon factory. The plague of 
Athens as painted by Thucydides or Lucretius, nay even the fabu- 
lous plague of London by De Foe, contain no scenes or situations 
equal in effect to some in this plain historic statement. Nay, it 
would perhaps be difficult to produce a passage from Ezekiel, from 
ZEschylus, or from Shakspeare, which would so profoundly startle 
the sense of sublimity as one or two of his incidents. 


234 GOETHE. 


universal character of humanity. It is also well 
known to observers of national characteristics, that 
amongst the Germans the household charities, the 
pteties of the hearth, as they may be called, exist, if 
not really in greater strength, yet with much less of 
the usual balances or restraints. A German father, for 
example, is like the grandfather of other nations ; and 
thus a piety, which in its own nature scarcely seems 
liable to excess, takes, in its external aspect, too often 
an air of effeminate imbecility. These two considera- 
tions are necessary to explain the intensity with which 
this Lisbon tragedy laid hold of the German mind, and 
chiefly under the one single aspect of its undistinguish- 
ing fury. Women, children, old men — these, doubt- 
less, had been largely involved in the perishing sixty 
thousand; and that reflection, it would seem from 
Goethe’s account, had so far embittered the sympathy 
of the Germans with their distant Portuguese brethren, 
that, in the Frankfort discussions, sullen murmurs had 
gradually ripened into bold impeachments of Provis 
dence. ‘There can be no gloomier form of infidelity 
than that which questions the moral attributes of the 
Great Being, in whose hands are the final destinies of 
us all. Such, however, was the form of Goethe’s 
earliest scepticism, such its origin; caught up from the 
very echoes which rang through the streets of Frank- 
fort when the subject occupied all men’s minds,’ And 
such, for anything that appears, continued to be its 
form thenceforwards to the close of his life, if specula- 
tions so crude could be said to have any form at all. 
Many are the analogies, some close ones, between 
England and Germany with regard to the circle of 


GOETHE. 235 


changes they have run through, political or social, for a 
century back. ‘The challenges are frequent to a com- 
parison; and sometimes the result would be to the 
advantage of Germany, more often to ours. But in 
religious philosophy, which in reality is the true 
popular philosophy, how vast is the superiority on the 
side of this country. Nota shopkeeper or mechanic, 
we may venture to say, but would have felt this obvi- 
ous truth, that surely the Lisbon earthquake yielded no 
fresh lesson, no peculiar moral, beyond what belonged 
to every man’s experience in every age. A passage 
in the New Testament about the fall of the tower of 
Siloam, and the just construction of that event, had 
already anticipated the difficulty, if such it could be 
thought. Not to mention, that calamities upon the 
same scale in the earliest age of Christianity, the fall 
of the amphitheatre at Fidene, or the destruction of 
Pompeii, had presented the same problem at the 
Lisbon earthquake. Nay, it is presented daily in the 
humblest individual case, where wrong is triumphant 
over right, or innocence confounded with guilt in one 
common disaster. And that the parents of Goethe 
should have authorized his error, if only by their 
silence, argues a degree of ignorance in them, which 
could not have co-existed with much superior know- 
ledge in the public mind. 

Goethe, in his Memoirs, (Book vi.,) commends his 
father for the zeal with which he superintended the 
education of his children. But apparently it was a 
zeal without knowledge. Many things were taught 
imperfectly, but all casually, and as chance suggested 
them. Italian was studied a little, because the elder 


236 GOETHE. 


Goethe had made an Italian tour, and had collected 
some Italian books, and engravings by Italian masters, 
Hebrew was studied a little, because Goethe the son 
had a fancy for it, partly with a view to theology, and 
partly because there was a Jewish quarter, gloomy and 
sequestrated, in the city of Frankfort. French offered 
itself no doubt on many suggestions, but originally on 
occasion of a French theatre, supported by the staff of 
the French army when quartered in the same city. 
Latin was gathered in a random way from a daily 
sense of its necessity. English upon the temptation of 
a stranger’s advertisement, promising upon moderate 
terms to teach that language in four weeks; a proof, 
by the way, that the system of bold innovations in the 
art of tuition had already commenced. Riding and 
fencing were “also attemped under masters apparently 
not very highly qualified, and in the same desultory 
style of application. Dancing was taught to his 
family, strange as it may seem, by Mr. Goethe himself. 
There is good reason to believe that not one of all 
these accomplishments was possessed by Goethe, when 
ready to visit the university, in a degree which made 
it practically of any use to him. Drawing and music 
were pursued confessedly as amusements; and it 
would be difficult to mention any attainment what- 
soever which Goethe had carried to a point of excel- 
lence in the years which he spent under his father’s 
care, unless it were his mastery over the common 
artifices of metre and the common topics of rhetoric, 
which fitted him for writing what are called occasional 
poems and impromptus. This talent he possessed in a 
remarkable degree, and at an early age; but he owed 
its cultivation entirely to himself. 


| 


GOETHE. 237 


In a city so orderly as Frankfort, and in a station 
privileged from all the common hardships of poverty, 
itcan hardly be expected that many incidents should 
arise, of much separate importance in themselves, to 
break the monotony of life; and the mind of Goethe 
was not contemplative enough to create a value for 
common occurrences through any peculiar impressions 
which he had derived from them. In the years 1763 
and 1764, when he must have been from fourteen to 
fifteen years old, Goethe witnessed the inauguration 
and coronation of a king of the Romans, a solemn 
spectacle connected by prescription with the city of 
Frankfort. He describes it circumstantially, but with 
very little feeling, in his Memoirs. Probably the pre- 
vailing sentiment, on looking back at least to this 
transitory splendor of dress, processions, and ceremo- 
nial forms, was one of cynical contempt. But this he 
could not express, as a person closely connected with 
a German court, without giving much and various 
offence. It is with some timidity even that he hazards 
a criticism upon single parts of the costume adopted by 
some of the actors in that gorgeous scene. White silk 
stockings, and pumps of the common form, he objects 
to as out of harmony with the antique and heraldic 
aspects of the general costume, and ventures fo sug- 
gest either boots or sandals as an improvement. Had 
Goethe felt himself at liberty from all restraints of 
private consideration in composing these Memoirs, can 
it be doubted that he would have taken his retrospect 
of this Frankfort inauguration from a different station ; 
from the station of that stern revolution which, within 
his own time, and partly under his own eyes, had 


2358 GOETHE. 


shattered the whole imperial system of thrones, in | 


whose equipage this gay pageant made so principala 


figure, had humbled Cesar himself to the dust, and | 


left him an emperor without an empire? We at least, 
for our parts, could not read without some emotion one 
little incident of these gorgeous scenes recorded by 
Goethe, namely, that when the emperor, on rejoining 
his wife for a few moments, held up to her notice his 
own hands and arms arrayed in the antique habiliments 
of Charlemagne, Maria Theresa — she whose children 
where summoned to so sad a share in the coming 
changes — gave way to sudden bursts of loud laughter, 
audible to the whole populace below her. ‘That laugh 
on surveying the departing pomps of Charlemagne, 
must, in any contemplative ear, have rung with a 
sound of deep significance, and with something of the 
same effect which belongs to a figure of death intro- 
duced by a painter, as mixing in the festal dances of a 
bridal assembly. 

These pageants of 1763-64 occupy a considerable 
space in Goethe’s Memoirs, and with some logical 
propriety at least, in consideration of their being 
exclusively attached to Frankfort, and connected by 
manifold links of person and office with the privileged 
character of the city. Perhaps he might feel a sort of 
narrow local patriotism in recalling these scenes to 
public notice by description, at a time when they had 
been irretrievably extinguished as realities. But, after 
making every allowance for their local value to a 
Frankfort family, and for their memorable splendor, 
we may venture to suppose that by far the most im- 
pressive remembrances which had gathered about the 


, 
| 


r 


GOETHE. 239 


boyhood of Goethe, were those which pointed to 
Frederick of Prussia. This singular man, so imbecile 
as a pretender to philosophy and_new lights, so truly 
heroic under misfortunes, was the first German who 
created a German interest, and gave a transient unity 
to the German name, under all its multiplied divisions. 
Were it only for this conquest of difficulties so pecu- 
liar, he would deserve his German designation of 
Fred. the Unique, (Fritz der einzige.) He had been 
partially tried and known previously; but it was the 
Seven Years’ War which made him the popular idol. 
This began in 1756; and to Frankfort, in a very 
peculiar way, that war brought dissensions and heart- 
burnings in its train. The imperial connections of the 
city with many public and private interests, pledged it 
to the anti-Prussian cause. It happened also that the 
truly German character of the reigning imperial 
family, the domestic habits of the empress and her 
young daughters, and other circumstances, were of a 
nature to endear the ties of policy; self-interest and 
affection pointed in the same direction. And yet were 
all these considerations allowed to melt away before 
the brilliant qualities of one man, and the romantic 
enthusiasm kindled by his victories. Frankfort was 
divided within herself; the young and the generous 
were all dedicated to Frederick. A smaller party, 
more catitious and prudent, were for the imperialists. 
Families were divided upon this question against fami- 
lies, and often against themselves; feuds, begun in 
private, issued often into public violence; and, accord- 
ing to Goethe’s own illustration, the streets were vexed 
by daily brawls, as hot and as personal as of old 
between the Capulets and Montagues. 


240 GOETHE. 


These dissensions, however, were pursued with not 


much personal risk to any of the Goethes, untila | 


French army passed the Rhine as allies of the imperi- 
alists. One corps of this force took up their quarters 
in Frankfort; and the Comte Thorane, who held a 
high appointment on the staff, settled himself for a 
long period of time in the spacious mansion of Goethe's 
father. This officer, whom his place made responsible 
for the discipline of the army in relation to the citizens, 
was naturally by temper disposed to moderation and 
forbearance. He was indeed a favorable specimen 
of French military officers under the old system; well 
bred, not arrogant, well informed, and a friend of the 
fine arts. For painting, in particular, he professed 
great regard and some knowledge. The Goethes were 
able to forward his views amongst German artists; 
whilst, on the other hand, they were pleased to have 
thus an opportunity of directing his patronage towards 
some of their own needy connections. In this ex- 
change of good offices, the two parties were for some 
time able to maintain a fair appearance of reciprocal 
good-will. This on the comte’s side, if not particu- 
larly warm, was probably sincere; but in Goethe the 
father it was a masque for inveterate dislike. A 
natural ground of this existed in the original relations 
between them. Under whatever disguise or pretext, 
the Frenchman was in fact a military intruder. He 
occupied the best suite of rooms in the house, used the 
furniture as his own; and, though upon private motives 
he abstained from doing all the injury which his situa- 
tion authorized, (so as in particular to have spread his 
fine military maps upon the floor, rather than disfigure 


GOETHE. 241 


the decorated walls by nails,) still he claimed credit, if 
not services of requital, for all such instances of forbear- 
ance. Here were grievances enough ; but, in addition 
to these, the comte’s official appointments drew upon 
him a weight of daily business, which kept the house 
in a continual uproar. Farewell to the quiet of a 
literary amateur, and the orderliness of a German 
household. Finally, the comte was a Frenchman. 
These were too many assaults upon one man’s pa- 
tience. It will be readily understood, therefore, how 
it happened, that, whilst Goethe’s gentle minded 
mother, with her flock of children, continued to be 
on the best terms with Comte Thorane, the master of 
the house kept moodily aloof, and retreated from all 
intercourse. 

Goethe, in his own Memoir, enters into large details 
upon this subject; and from him we shall borrow the 


‘ denouement of the tale. A crisis had for some time 


\ 


been lowering over the French affairs in Frankfort ; 
things seemed ripening for a battle; and at last it 
came. Flight, siege, bombardment, possibly a storm, 
all danced before the eyes of the terrified citizens. For- 
tunately, however, the battle took place at the distance 
of four or five miles from Frankfort. Monsieur le 
Comte was absent, of course, on the field of battle. 
His unwilling host thought that on such an occasion he 
also might go out in quality of spectator; and with 
this purpose he connected another, worthy of a Parson 
Adams. It is his son who tells the story, whose filial 
duty was not proof against his sense of the ludicrous. 
The old gentleman’s hatred of the French had by this 
time brought him over .to his son’s admiration of the 
16 


242 GOETHE. 


Prussian hero. Not doubting for an instant that victory 
would follow that standard, he resolved on this day to 
offer in person his congratulations to the Prussian 
army, whom he already viewed as his liberator from 
a domestic nuisance. So purposing, he made his way 
cautiously to the suburbs; from the suburbs, still 
listening at each advance, he went forward to the 
country ; totally forgetting, as his son insists, that, 
however completely beaten, the French army must 
still occupy some situation or other between himself 
and his German deliverer. Coming, however, at 
length to a heath, he found some of those marauders 
usually to be met with in the rear of armies, prowling 
about, and at intervals amusing themselves with shoot- 
ing at a mark. For want of a better, it seemed not 
improbable that a large German head might answer 
their purpose. Certain signs admonished him of this, 


and the old gentleman crept back to Frankfort. Not 


many hours after came back also the comte, by no 
means creeping, however; on the contrary, crowing 
with all his might for a victory which he averred 
himself to have won. There had in fact been an 
affair, but on no very great scale, and with no distin- 
guished results. Some prisoners, however, he brought, 
together with some wounded; and naturally he ex- 
pected all well disposed persons to make their compli- 
ments of congratulation upon this triumph. Of this 
duty poor Mrs. Goethe and her children cheerfully 
acquitted themselves that same night; and Monsieur le 
Comte was so well pleased with the sound opinions of 
the little Goethes, that he sent them in return a collec- 
tion of sweetmeats and fruits. All promised to go 


GOETHE. 243 


well; intentions, after all, are not acts; and there 
certainly is not, nor ever was, any treason in taking a 
morning’s walk. But, as ill luck would have it, just as 
Mr. Goethe was passing the comte’s door, out came the 
comte in person, purely by accident, as we are told; 
but we suspect that the surly old German, either under 
his morning hopes or his evening disappointments, had 
talked with more frankness than prudence. ‘ Good 
evening to you, Herr Goethe,”’ said the comte; “* you 
are come, | see, to pay your tribute of congratulation. 
Somewhat of the latest, to be sure; but no matter.” 
‘By no means,” replied the German ; “‘ by no means; 
mit nichten. Heartily I wished, the whole day long, 
that you and your cursed gang might all go to the 
devil together.”” Here was plain speaking, at least. 
The Comte Thorane could no longer complain of 
dissimulation. His first movement was to order an 
arrest ; and the official interpreter of the French army 
took to himself the whole credit that he did not carry 
it into effect. Goethe takes the trouble to report a 
dialogue, of length and dulness absolutely incredible, 
between this interpreter and the comte. No such 
dialogue, we may be assured, ever took place. Goethe. 
may, however, be right in supposing that, amongst a 
foreign soldiery, irritated by the pointed contrasts 
between the Frankfort treatment of their own wounded, 
and of their prisoners who happened to be in the same 
circumstances, and under a military council not held to 
any rigorous responsibility, his father might have found 
no very favorable consideration of his case. It is well, 
therefore, that after some struggle the comte’s better 
nature triumphed. He suffered Mrs. Goethe’s merits 


244 GOETHE. 


to outweigh her husband’s delinquency ; counter- 
manded the order for arrest, and, during the remainder 
of their connection, kept at such a distance from his 
moody host as was equally desirable for both. For- 
tunately that remainder was not very long. Comte 
Thorane was soon displaced; and the whole army was 
soon afterwards withdrawn from Frankfort. 

In his fifteenth year Goethe was entangled in some 
connection with young people of inferior rank, amongst 
whom was Margaret, a young girl about two years 
older than himself, and the object of his first love. 
The whole affair, as told by Goethe, is somewhat 
mysterious. What might be the final views of the 
elder parties it is difficult to say; but Goethe assures 
us that they used his services only in writing an occa- 
sional epithalamium, the pecuniary acknowledgment 
for which was spent jovially in a general banquet. 
The magistrates, however, interfered, and endeavored 
to extort a confession from Goethe. He, as the son of 
a respectable family, was to be pardoned ; the others 
to be punished. No confession, however, could be 
extorted ; and for his own part he declares that, 
beyond the offence of forming a clandestine connec- 
tion, he had nothing to confess. The affair terminated, 
as regarded himself, in a severe illness. Of the others 
we hear no more. 

The next event of importance in Goethe’s life was 
his removal to college. His own wishes pointed to 
Gottingen, but his father preferred Leipsic. Thither 
accordingly he went, but he carried his obedience no 
farther. Declining the study of jurisprudence, he 
attached himself to general literature. Subsequently 


GOETHE. 245 


he removed to the university of Strasburg; but in 
neither place could it be said that he pursued any 
regular course of study. His health suffered at times 
during this period of his life ; at first from an affection 
of the chest, caused by an accident on his first journey 
to Leipsic; the carriage had stuck fast in the muddy 
roads, and Goethe exerted himself too much in assist- 
ing to extricate the wheels. A second illness con- 
nected with the digestive organs brought him into 
considerable danger. 

After his return to Frankfort, Goethe commenced 
his career as an author. In 1773, and the following 
year, he made his maiden essay in Goetz of Berli- 
chingen, a drama, (the translation of which, remarka- 
bly enough, was destined to be the literary coup d@’essai 
of Sir Walter Scott,) and in the far-famed Werther. 
The first of these was pirated; and in consequence 
the author found some difficulty in paying for the 
paper of the genuine edition, which part of the ex- 
pense, by his contract with the publisher, fell upon 
himself. The general and early popularity of the 
second work is well known. Yet, except in so far as 
it might spread his name abroad, it cannot be supposed 
to have had much influence in attracting that potent 
patronage which now began to determine the course of 
his future life. So much we collect from the account 
which Goethe himself has left us of this affair in its 
earliest stages. 

“‘] was sitting alone in my room,” says he, ‘at my 
father’s house in Frankfort, when a gentleman entered, 
whom at first I took for Frederick Jacobi, but soon 
discovered by the dubious light to be a stranger. He 


246 GOETHE. 


had a military air; and announcing himself by the 
name of Von Knebel, gave me to understand in a short 
explanation, that being in the Prussian service, he had 
connected himself; during a long residence at Berlin 
and Potsdam, with the literati of those places ; but that 
at present he held the appointment from the court of 
Weimar of travelling tutor to the Prince Constantine. 
This I heard with pleasure; for many of our friends 
had. brought us the most interesting accounts from 
Weimar, in particular that the Duchess Amelia, mother 
of the young grand duke and his brother, summoned 
to her assistance in educating her sons the most dis- 
tinguished men in Germany ; and that the university 
of Jena cooperated powerfully in all her liberal plans. 
I was aware also that Wieland was in high favor; and 
that the German Mercury (a literary journal of emi- 
nence) was itself highly creditable to the city of Jena, 
from which it issued. A beautiful and well-conducted 
theatre had besides, as I knew, been lately established 
at Weimar. This, it was true, had been destroyed ; 
but that event, under common circumstances so likely 
to be fatal as respected the present, had served only to 
call forth the general expression of confidence in the 
young prince as a restorer and upholder of all great 
interests, and true to his purposes under any calamity.” 
Thinking thus, and thus prepossessed in favor of Wei- 
mar, it was natural that Goethe should be eager to see 
the prince. Nothing was easier. It happened that he 
and his brother Constantine were at this moment in 
Frankfort, and Von Knebel willingly offered to present 
Goethe. No sooner said than done; they repaired to 
the hotel, where they found the illustrious travellers, 
with Count Goertz, the tutor of the elder. 


GOETHE. 247 


Upon this occasion an accident, rather than any 
previous reputation of Goethe, was probably the deter- 
mining occasion which led to his favor with the future 
sovereign of Weimar. A new book lay upon the 
table; that none of the strangers had read it, Goethe 
inferred from observing that the leaves were as yet 
uncut. It was a work of Moser, (Patriotische Phan- 
tasien ;) and, being political rather than literary in its 
topics, it presented to Goethe, previously acquainted 
with its outline, an opportunity for conversing with the 
prince upon subjects nearest to his heart, and of show- 
ing that he was not himself a mere studious recluse. 
The opportunity was not lost; the prince and his tutor 
were much interested, and perhaps a little surprised. 
Such subjects have the further advantage, according to 
Goethe’s own illustration, that, like the Arabian thou- 
sand and one nights, as conducted by Sultana Sche- 
herezade, ‘‘ never ending, still beginning,” they rarely 
come to any absolute close, but so interweave one into 
another, as still to leave behind a large arrear of inter- 
est. In order to pursue the conversation, Goethe was 
invited to meet them soon after at Mentz. He kept 
the appointment punctually ; made himself even more 
agreeable ; and finally received a formal invitation to 
enter the service of this excellent prince, who was now 
beginning to collect around him all those persons who 
have since made Weimar so distinguished a name in 
connection with the German literature. With some 
opposition from his father, who held up the rupture 
_ between Voltaire and Frederick of Prussia as a prece- 
dent applying to all possible connections of princes and 
literati, Goethe accepted the invitation; and hence- 


248 GOETHE. 


forwards, for upwards of fifty-five years, his fortunes 
were bound up with those of the ducal house of 
Weimar. 

The noble part which that house played in the great 
modern drama of German politics is well known, and 
would have been better known had its power been 
greater. But the moral value of its sacrifices and its 
risks is not the less. Had greater potentates shown 
equal firmness, Germany would not have been laid at 
the feet of Napoleon. In 1806 the grand duke was 
aware of the peril which awaited the allies of Prussia ; 
but neither his heart nor his conscience would allow of 
his deserting a friend in whose army he held a prin- 
cipal command. ‘The decisive battle took place in his 
own territory, and not far from his own palace and city 
of Weimar. Personally he was with the Prussian 
army; but his excellent consort stayed in the palace to 
encourage her subjects, and as far as possible to con- 
ciliate the enemy by her presence. The fortune of 
that great day, the 14th of October, 1806, was decided 
early ; and the awful event was announced by a hot 
retreat and a murderous pursuit through the streets of 
the town. In the evening Napoleon arrived in person ; 
and now came the trying moment. ‘ The duchess,” 
says an Englishman well acquainted with Weimar and 
its court, “* placed herself on the top of the staircase to 
greet him with the formality of a courtly reception. 
Napoleon started when he beheld her, Qui étes vous ? 
he exclaimed with characteristic abruptness. Je suis 
la Duchesse de Weimar. Je vous plains, he retorted 
fiercely, J’écraserai votre mari; he then added, ‘I 
shall dine in my apartment,’ and rushed by her. The 


GOETHE. 249 


night was spent on the part of the soldiery in all the 
horrid excesses of rapine. In the morning the duchess 
sent to inquire concerning the health of his majesty the 
emperor, and to solicit an audience. He, who had 
now benefited by his dreams, or by his reflections, 
returned a gracious answer, and invited himself to 
breakfast with her in her apartment.” In the conver- 
sation which ensued, Napoleon asked her if her hus- 
band were mad, upon which she justified the duke by 
appealing to his own magnanimity, asking in her turn 
if his majesty would have approved of his deserting 
the king of Prussia at the moment when he was 
attacked by so potent a monarch as himself. The rest 
of the conversation was in the same spirit, uniting with 
a sufficient concession to the circumstances of the mo- 
ment a dignified vindication of a high-minded policy. 
Napoleon was deeply impressed with respect for her, 
and loudly expressed it. For her sake, indeed, he 
even affected to pardon her husband, thus making a 
merit with her of the necessity which he felt, from 
other motives, for showing forbearance towards a 
family so nearly allied to that of St. Petersburg. In 
1813 the grand duke was found at his post in that 
great gathering of the nations which took place on the 
stupendous fields of Leipsic, and was complimented 
by the allied sovereigns as one of the most faithful 
amongst the faithful to the great cause, yet undecided, 
of national independence. 

With respect to Goethe, as a councillor so near the 
duke’s person, it may be supposed that his presence 
was never wanting where it promised to be useful. In 
the earlier campaigns of the duke, Goethe was his 


250 GOETHE. 


companion; but in the final contest with Napoleon he 
was unequal to the fatigues of such a post. In all the 
functions of peace, however, he continued to be a 
useful servant to the last, though long released from 
all official duties. Each had indeed most honorably 
earned the gratitude of the other. Goethe had sur- 
rendered the flower of his years and the best energies 
of his mind to the service of his serene master. On 
the other hand, that master had to him been at once 
his Augustus and his Mecenas; such is his own 
expression. Under him he had founded a family, 
raised an estate, obtained titles and decorations from 
various courts; and in the very vigor of his life he 
had been allowed to retire, with all the honors of long 
service, to the sanctuary of his own study, and to the 
cultivation of his leisure, as the very highest mode in 
which he could further the public interest. 

The life of Goethe was so quiet and so uniform after 
the year 1775, when he may first be said to have 
entered into active life, by taking service with the 
Duke of Weimar, that a biographer will find hardly 
any event to notice, except two journeys to Italy, and 
one campaign in 1792, until he draws near the close of 
his long career. It cannot interest an English reader 
to see the dates of his successive appointments. It is 
enough to know that they soon raised him to as higha 
station as was consistent with literary leisure ; and that 
he had from the beginning enjoyed the unlimited confi- 
dence of his sovereign. Nothing remained, in fact, for 
the subject to desire which the prince had not previ- 
ously volunteered. In 1825, they were able to look 
back upon a course of uninterrupted friendship, main- 


GOETHE. 251 


tained through good and evil fortunes, unexampled in 
their agitation and interest for fifty years. The duke 
commemorated this remarkable event by a jubilee, and 
by a medal in honor of Goethe. Full of years and 
honor, this eminent man might now begin to think 
of his departure. However, his serenity continued 
unbroken nearly for two years more, when his illustri- 
ous patron died. That shock was the first which put 
his fortitude to trial. In 18380 others followed; the 
duchess, who had won so much admiration from Napo- 
leon, died; then followed his own son; and there 
remained little now to connect his wishes with the 
earth. The family of his patron he had lived to see 
flourishing in his descendants to the fourth generation. 
His own grandchildren were prosperous and happy. 
His intellectual labors were now accomplished. All 
that remained to wish for was a gentle dismission. 
This he found in the spring of 1832. After a six days’ 
illness, which caused him no apparent suffering, on the 
morning of the 22d of March he breathed away as if 
into a gentle sleep, surrounded by his daughter-in-law 
and her children. Never was a death more in harmo- 
ny with the life it closed ; both had the same character 
of deep and absolute serenity. 

Such is the outline of Goethe’s life, traced through 
its principal events. But as these events, after all, 
borrow their interest mainly from the consideration 
allowed to Goethe as an author, and as a model in the 
German literature, — that being the centre about which 
all secondary feelings of interest in the man must 
finally revolve, — it thus becomes a duty to throw a 
glance over his principal works. Dismissing his songs, 


252 GOETHE. 


to which has been ascribed by some critics a very high 
value for their variety and their lyrical enthusiasm ; 
dismissing also a large body of short miscellaneous 
poems, suited to the occasional circumstances in which 
they arose ; we may throw the capital works of Goethe 
into two classes, philosophic novels, and dramas. The 
novels, which we call philosophic by way of expressing 
their main characteristic in being written to serve a 
preconceived purpose, or to embody some peculiar 
views of life, or some aspects of philosophic truth, are 
three, viz., the Werther’s Leiden; secondly, the 
Wilhelm Meister ; and, lastly, the Wahloer-wand- 
schaften. 'The first two exist in English translations ; 
and though the Werther had the disadvantage of com- 
ing to us through a French version, already, perhaps, 
somewhat colored and distorted to meet the Parisian 
standards of sentiment, yet, as respects Goethe and his 
reputation amongst us, this wrong has been redressed, 
or compensated at least, by the good fortune of his 
Wilhelm Meister, in falling into the hands of a trans- 
lator whose original genius qualified him for sympa- 
thizing even to excess with any real merits in that 
work. ‘This novel is in its own nature and purpose 
sufficiently obscure ; and the commentaries which have 
been written upon it by the Humboldts, Schlegels, &c.» 
make the enigma still more enigmatical. We shall not 
venture abroad upon an ocean of discussion so truly 
dark, and at the same time so illimitable. Whether it 
be qualified to excite any deep and sincere feeling of 
one kind or another in the German mind, — in a mind 
trained under German discipline, — this we will con- 
sent to waive as a quession not immediately interesting 


GOETHE. 253 


to ourselves. Enough that it has not gained, and will 
not gain, any attention in this country; and this not 
only because it is thoroughly deficient in all points of 
attraction to readers formed upon our English litera- 
ture, but because in some capital circumstances it is 
absolutely repulsive. We do not wish to offend the 
admirers of Goethe; but the simplicity of truth will 
not allow us to conceal, that in various points of de- 
scription or illustration, and sometimes in the very 
outline of the story, the Wilhelm Meister is at open 
war, not with decorum and good taste merely, but with 
moral purity and the dignity of human nature. As a 
novelist, Goethe and his reputation are problems, and 
likely to continue such, to the countrymen of Mrs. 
Inchbald, Miss Harriet Lee, Miss Edgeworth, and Sir 
Walter Scott. To the dramatic works of Goethe we 
are disposed to pay more homage; but neither in the 
absolute amount of our homage at all professing to 
approach his public admirers, nor to distribute the 
proportions of this homage amongst his several per- 
formances according to the graduations of their scale. 
The Iphigenie is built upon the old subject of Iphigenia 
in Tauris, as treated by Euripides and other Grecian 
dramatists ; and, if we are to believe a Schlegel, it is 
in beauty and effect a mere echo or reverberation from 
the finest strains of the old Grecian music. That it is 
somewhat nearer to the Greek model than a play after 
the fashion of Racine, we grant. Setting aside such 
faithful transcripts from the antique as the Samson 
Agonistes, we might consent to view Goethe as that 
one amongst the moderns who had made the closest 
approximation to the Greek stage. Proximus, we 


254 GOETHE. 


might say, with Quintilian, but with him we must add, 
“¢ sed longo intervallo ;” and if in the second rank, yet 
nearer to the third than to the first. Two other 
dramas, the Clavigo and the #&gmont, fall below the 
Iphigenie by the very character of their pretensions ; 
the first as too openly renouncing the grandeurs of the 
ideal; the second as confessedly violating the historic 
truth of character, without temptation to do so, and 
without any consequent indemnification. The Tasso 
has been supposed to realize an Italian beauty of 
genial warmth and of sunny repose; but from the 
common defect of German criticism — the absence of 
all sufficient illustrations — it is as difficult to under- 
stand the true nature and constituents of the supposed 
Italian standard set up for the regulation of our judg- 
ments, as it is to measure the degree of approach 
made to that standard in this particular work. Euge- 
nie is celebrated for the artificial burnish of the style, 
but otherwise has been little relished. It has the 
beauty of marble sculpture, say the critics of Goethe, 
but also the coldness. We are not often disposed to 
quarrel with these critics as below the truth in their 
praises ; in this instance we are. The Eugenie is a 
fragment, or (as Goethe himself called it in conversa- 
tion) a torso, being only the first drama ina trilogy or 
series of three dramas, each having a separate plot, 
whilst all are parts of a more general and comprehen- 
sive plan. It may be charged with languor in the 
movement of the action, and with excess of illustration. 
Thus, e. g. the grief of the prince for the supposed 
death of his daughter, is the monotonous topic which 
occupies one entire act. But the situations, though not 


GOETHE. 255 


those of scenical distress, are so far from being unex- 
citing, that, on the contrary, they are too powerfully 
afflicting. 

The lustre of all these performances, however, is 
eclipsed by the unrivalled celebrity amongst German 
critics of the Faust. Upon this it is better to say 
nothing than too little. How trifling an advance has 
been made towards clearing the ground for any sane 
criticism, may be understood from this fact, that as yet 
‘no two people have agreed about the meaning of any 
separate scene, or about the drift of the whole. 
Neither is this explained by saying, that until lately the 
Faust was a fragment; for no additional light has 
dawned upon the main question since the publication 
of the latter part. 

One work there is of Goethe’s which falls into 
neither of the classes here noticed; we mean the 
Hermann and Dorothea, a narrative poem, in hexa- 
meter verse. This appears to have given more plea- 
sure to readers not critical, than any other work of its 
author ; and it is remarkable that it traverses humbler 
ground, as respects both its subject, its characters, and 
its scenery. From this, and other indications of the 
same kind, we are disposed to infer that Goethe mis- 
took his destination; that his aspiring nature misled 
him; and that his success would have been greater 
had he confined himself to the real in domestic life, 
without raising his eyes to the zdeal. 

We must also mention, that Goethe threw out some 
novel speculations in physical science, and particularly 
in physiology, in the doctrine of colors, and in com- 
parative anatomy, which have divided the opinions of 


256 GOETHE, 


critics even more than any of those questions which 
have arisen upon points more directly connected with 
his avowed character of poet. 

It now remains to say a few words by way of sum- 
ming up his pretensions asa man, and his intellectual 
power in the age to which he belonged. His rank and 
value as a moral being are so plain as to be legible to 
him who runs. Everybody must feel that his tempera- 
ment and constitutional tendency was of that happy 
quality, the animal so nicely balanced with the intel- 
lectual, that with any ordinary measure of prosperity 
he could not be otherwise than a good man. He 
speaks himself of his own ‘virtue,’ sans phrase; 
and we tax him with no vanity in doing so. As a 
young man even at the universities, which at that time 
were barbarously sensual in Germany, he was (for so 
much we collect from his own Memoirs) eminently 
capable of self-restraint. He preserves a tone of 
gravity, of sincerity, of respect for female dignity, 
which we never find associated with the levity and 
recklessness of vice. We feel throughout, the pres- 
ence of one who, in respecting others, respects him- 
self; and the cheerfulness of the presiding tone 
persuades us at once that the narrator is in a healthy 
moral condition, fears no ill, and is conscious of having 
meditated none. Yet at the same time we cannot 
disguise from ourselves, that the moral temperament 
of Goethe was one which demanded prosperity. Had 
he been called to face great afflictions, singular tempta- 
tions, or a billowy and agitated course of life, our 
belief is that his nature would have been found une- 
qual to the strife ; he would have repeated the mixed 


GOETHE. 257 


and moody character of his father. Sunny prosperity 
was essential to his nature ; his virtues were adapted to 
that condition. And happily that was his fate. He 
had no personal misfortunes ; his path was joyous in 
this life ; and even the reflex sorrow from the calami- 
ties of his friends did not press too heavily on his 
sympathies ; none of these were in excess either as to 
degree or duration. 

In this estimate of Goethe as a moral being, few 
people will differ with us, unless it were the religious 
bigot. And to him we must concede thus much, that 
Goethe was not that religious creature which by nature 
he was intended to become. ‘This is to be regretted. 
Goethe was naturally pious, and reverential towards 
higher natures; and it was in the mere levity or 
wantonness of youthful power, partly also through that 
early false bias growing out of the Lisbon earthquake, 
that he falsified his original destination. Do we mean, 
then, that a childish error could permanently master 
his understanding? Not so; that would have been 
corrected with his growing strength. But having once 
arisen, it must for a long time have moulded his feel- 
ings ; until corrected, it must have impressed a corres- 
ponding false bias upon his practical way of viewing 
things; and that sort of false bias, once established, 
might long survive a mere error of the understanding. 
One thing is undeniable, — Goethe had so far corrupted 
and clouded his natural mind, that he did not look up 
to God, or the system of things beyond the grave, with 
the interest of reverence and awe, but with the interest 
of curiosity. 

Goethe, however, in a moral estimate, will be 

17 


258 GOETHE. 


viewed pretty uniformly. But Goethe intellectually, 
Goethe as a power acting upon the age in which he 
lived, that is another question. Let us put a case; 
suppose that Goethe’s death had occurred fifty years 
ago, that is, in the year 1785, what would have been 
the general impression? Would Europe have felt a 
shock? Would Europe have been sensible even of 
the event? Not at all; it would have been obscurely 
noticed in the newspapers of Germany, as the death 
of a novelist who had produced some effect about ten 
years before. In 1832, it was announced by the post- 
horns of all Europe as the death of him who had 
written the Wilhelm Meister, the Iphigenie, and the 
Faust, and who had been enthroned by some of his 
admirers on the same seat with Homer and Shak- 
speare, as composing what they termed the ¢érinity of 
men of genius. And yet it is a fact, that, in the 
opinion of some amongst the acknowledged leaders of 
our own literature for the last twenty-five years, the 
Werther was superior to all which followed it, and for 
mere power was the paramount work of Goethe. For 
ourselves, we must acknowledge our assent upon the 
whole to this verdict; and at the same time we will 
avow our belief that the reputation of Goethe must 
decline for the next generation or two, until it reaches 
its just level. Three causes, we are persuaded, have 
concurred to push it so far beyond the proportion of 
real and genuine interest attached to his works, for in 
Germany his works are little read, and in this country 
not at all. First, his extraordinary age; for the last 
twenty years Goethe had been the patriarch of the 
German literature. Secondly, the splendor of his 


GOETHE. 259 


official rank at the court of Weimar; he was the 
minister and private friend of the patriot sovereign 
amongst the princes of Germany. Thirdly, the quan- 
tity of enigmatical and unintelligible writing which he 
has designedly thrown into his latter works, by way 
of keeping up a system of discussion and strife upon 
his own meaning amongst the critics of his country. 
These disputes, had his meaning been of any value in 
his own eyes, he would naturally have settled by a few 
authoritative words from himself; but it was his policy 
to keep alive the feud in a case where it was of im- 
portance, that his name should continue to agitate the 
world, but of none at all that he should be rightly 
interpreted. 


ois sien oe pe a Fyei ott ie, cegue ch 
\ tern, oe Sand 


en eS ee oe 


a7 
“fyi. Gh ‘eid . ' 


“ty i 


; 
‘ 


/ 


eee) Gh 


. 


wiw ® are oyT4 ol 


oh pb tad wll 


* Rivne 


fri CLP 


wer 


sds 
| 


bl 
' 


th 


Wt «he 
‘1 
e 7 


cA 


“oe ew 
' 
en dint 
| j 2 
’ 
en ie ee 
sy re ty eer 
5 ORE PD) gue 
a OF: 
i vd nn by 
hgh aS. ae 


vs 2S 
*%. 


“De 


es, 


eae yy wey Jaye 
walpiae) Wer tant Wer 

py eh eldest 

a ey bone) ea 

* ae bar a 


¥Ht rehe Com 


‘i. 330th oO stra 


cme taney 

h Hot ae baa 
vr: ef) Chey ey 
toh at Sohey ot 


; hl ‘ 4 
7) ply ast te Ete ee 


yy 


* 


ow ontop 
(dart ial y) ligne g 
lb ysag 7B) tee Gone ny 
vo (edie. Gaotatat 
A 
; 3 re 

Ne Pie Pye 
' f se 
iad we fay . 


oe Sat) af 4 


7 rR 


SCHILLER. 


JoHN CHRISTOPHER FREDERICK VON SCHILLER, was 
born at Marbach, a small town in the duchy of Wir- 
temberg, on the 10th day of November, 1759. It will 
aid the reader in synchronizing the periods of this 
great man’s life with the corresponding events through- 
out Christendom, if we direct his attention to the fact, 
that Schiller’s birth nearly coincided in point of time 
with that of Robert Burns, and that it preceded that of 
Napoleon by about ten years. 

The position of Schiller is remarkable. In the land 
of his birth, by those who undervalue him the most, he 
is ranked as the second name in German literature ; 
everywhere else he is ranked as the first. For us, who 
are aliens to Germany, Schiller is the representative of 
the German intellect in its highest form; and to him, 
at all events, whether first or second, it is certainly due, 
that the German intellect has become a known power, 
and a power of growing magnitude, for the great com- 
monwealth of Christendom. Luther and Kepler, potent 


262 SCHILLER. 


intellects as they were, did not make themselves 
known as Germans. The revolutionary vigor of the 
one, the starry lustre of the other, blended with the 
convulsions of reformation, or with the aurora of 
ascending science, in too kindly and genial a tone to 
call off the attention from the work which they per- 
formed, from the service which they promoted, to the 
circumstances of their personal position. Their coun- 
try, their birth, their abode, even their separate exist- 
ence, was merged in the mighty cause to which they 
lent their cooperation. And thus at the beginning of 
the sixteenth century, thus at the beginning of the 
seventeenth, did the Titan sons of Germany defeat 
their own private pretensions by the very grandeur of 
their merits. ‘Their interest as patriots was lost and 
confounded in their paramount interest as cosmopolites, 
What they did for man and for human dignity eclipsed 
what they had designed for Germany. After them 
there was a long interlunar period of darkness for the 
land of the Rhine and the Danube. The German 
energy, too spasmodically excited, suffered a collapse. 
Throughout the whole of the seventeenth century, but 
one vigorous mind arose for permanent effects in litera- 
ture. This was Opitz, a poet who deserves even yet 
to be read with attention, but who is no more worthy 
to be classed as the Dryden, whom his too partial 
countrymen’ have styled him, than the Germany of the 
Thirty Years’ War of taking rank by the side of 
civilized and cultured England during the Cromwellian 
era, or Klopstock of sitting on the same throne with 
Milton. Leibnitz was the one sole potentate in the 
fields of intellect whom the Germany of this country 


SCHILLER. 263 


produced ; and he, like Luther and Kepler, impresses 
us rather as a European than as a German mind, 
partly perhaps from his having pursued his self- 
development in foreign lands, partly from his large 
circle of foreign connections, but most of all from his 
having written chiefly in French or in Latin. Passing 
onwards to the eighteenth century, we find, through its 
earlier half, an absolute wilderness, unreclaimed and 
without promise of natural vegetation, as the barren 
arena on which the few insipid writers of Germany 
paraded. ‘The torpor of academic dulness domineered 
over the length and breadth of the land. And as these 
academic bodies were universally found harnessed in 
the equipage of petty courts, it followed that the 
lethargies of pedantic dulness were uniformly deep- 
ened by the lethargies of aulic and ceremonial dulness ; 
so that, if the reader represents to himself the very 
abstract of birthday odes, sycophantish dedications, 
and court sermons, he will have some adequate idea of 
the sterility and the mechanical formality which at that 
era spread the sleep of death over German literature. 
Literature, the very word literature, points the laughter 
of scorn to what passed under that name during the 
period of Gottsched. That such a man indeed as this 
Gottsched, equal at the best to the composition of a 
Latin grammar or a school arithmetic, should for a 
moment have presided over the German muses, stands 
out as in itself a brief and significant memorial, too 
certain for contradiction, and yet almost too gross for 
belief, of the apoplectic sleep under which the mind of 
central Europe at that era lay oppressed. The rust of 
disuse had corroded the very principles of activity. 


264 * SCHILLER. 


And, as if the double night of academic dulness, com- 
bined with the dulness of court inanities, had not been 
sufficient for the stifling of all native energies, the 
feebleness of French models (and of these moreover 
naturalized through still feebler imitations) had become 
the law and standard for all attempts at original com- 
position. The darkness of night, it is usually said, 
grows deeper as it approaches the dawn; and the very 
enormity of that prostration under which the German 
intellect at this time groaned, was the most certain 
pledge to any observing eye of that intense reaction 
soon to stir and kindle among the smouldering activi- 
ties of this spell-bound people. This re-action, how- 
ever, was not abrupt and theatrical. It moved through 
slow stages and by equable gradations. It might be 
said to commence from the middle of the eighteenth 
century, that is, about nine years before the birth of 
Schiller; but a progress of forty years had not carried 
it so far towards its meridian altitude, as that the sym- 
pathetic shock from the French Revolution was by 
one fraction more rude and shattering than the public 
torpor still demanded. There is a memorable cor- 
respondency throughout all members of Protestant 
Christendom in whatsoever relates to literature and 
intellectual advance. However imperfect the organi- 
zation which binds them together, it was sufficient even 
in these elder times to transmit reciprocally from one 
to every other, so much of that illumination which 
could be gathered into books, that no Christian state 
could be much in advance of another, supposing that 
Popery opposed no barriers to free communication, 
unless only in those points which depended upon local 


SCHILLER, 265 


gifts of nature, upon the genius of a particular people, 
or upon the excellence of its institutions. These 
advantages were incommunicable, let the freedom of 
intercourse have been what it might. England could 
not send off by posts or by heralds her iron and coals; 
she could not send the indomitable energy of her 
population ; she could not send the absolute security of 
property ; she could not send the good faith of her 
parliaments. These were gifts indigenous to herself, 
either through the temperament of her people, or 
through the original endowments of her soil. But her 
condition of moral sentiment, her high-toned civic 
elevation, her atmosphere of political feeling and 
popular boldness; much of these she could and did 
transmit, by the radiation of the press, to the very 
extremities of the German empire. Not only were 
our books translated, but it is notorious to those ac- 
quainted with German novels, or other pictures of 
German society, that as early as the Seven Years’ 
War, (1756-—1763,) in fact, from the very era when 
Cave and Dr. Johnson first made the parliamentary 
debates accessible to the English themselves, most of 
the German journals repeated, and sent forward as by 
telegraph, these senatorial displays to every village 
throughout Germany. From the polar latitudes to the 
Mediterranean, fromthe mouths of the Rhine to the 
Euxine, there was no other exhibition of free delibera- 
tive eloquence in any popular assembly. And _ the 
Luise of Voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued 
for its truth of portraiture than our own Vicar of 
Wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergy- 
man of a rural. parish did not think his breakfast 


266 SCHILLER. 


equipage complete without the latest report from the 
great senate that sat in London. Hence we need not 
be astonished that German and English literature were 
found by the French Revolution in pretty nearly the 
same condition of semi-vigilance and imperfect anima- 
tion. That mighty event reached us both, reached us 
all, we may say, (speaking of Protestant states,) at the 
same moment, by the same tremendous galvanism. 
The snake, the intellectual snake, that lay in ambush 
among all nations, roused itself, sloughed itself, re- 
newed its youth, in all of them at the same period. 
A. new world opened upon us all ; new revolutions of 
thought arose; new and nobler activities were born; 
‘¢ and other palms were won.” 

But by and through Schiller it was, as its main 
organ, that this great revolutionary impulse expressed 
itself. Already, as we have said, not less than forty 
years before the earthquake by which France exploded 
and projected the scoria of her huge crater over all 
Christian lands, a stirring had commenced among the 
dry bones of intellectual Germany; and symptoms 
arose that the breath of life would soon disturb, by 
nobler agitations than by petty personal quarrels, the 
deathlike repose even of the German universities. 
Precisely in those bodies, however, it was, in those as 
connected with tyrannical governments, each academic 
body being shackled to its own petty centre of local 
despotism, that the old spells remained unlinked ; and 
to them, equally remarkable as firm trustees of truth, 
and as obstinate depositories of darkness or of super- 
annuated prejudice, we must ascribe the slowness of the 
German movement on the path of reascent. Mean- 


SCHILLER. 267 


time the earliest torch-bearer to the murky literature of 
this great land, this crystallization of political states, 
was Bodmer. This man had no demoniac genius, 
such as the service required; but he had some taste, 
and, what was better, he had some sensibility. He 
lived among the Alps; and his reading lay among the 
alpine sublimities of Milton and Shakspeare. Through 
his very eyes he imbibed a daily scorn of Gottsched 
and his monstrous compound of German coarseness 
with French sensual levity. He could not look at his 
native Alps, but he saw in them, and their austere 
grandeurs or their dread realities, a spiritual reproach 
to the hollowness and falsehood of that dull imposture 
which Gottsched offered by way of substitute for 
nature. He was taught by the Alps to crave for 
something nobler and deeper. Bodmer, though far 
below such a function, rose by favor of circumstances 
into an apostle or missionary of truth for Germany. 
He translated passages of English literature. He in- 
oculated with his own sympathies the more fervent 
mind of the youthful Klopstock, who visited him in 
Switzerland. And it soon became evident that Germany 
was not dead, but sleeping ; and once again, legibly for 
any eye, the pulses of life began to play freely through 
the vast organization of central Europe. 

Klopstock, however, though a fervid, a religious, and 
for that reason an anti-Gallican mind, was himself an 
abortion. Such at least is our own opinion of this poet. 
He was the child and creature of enthusiasm, but of en- 
thusiasm not allied with a masculine intellect, or any 
organ for that capacious vision and meditative range 
which his subjects demanded. He was essentially 


268 SCHILLER. 


thoughtless, betrays everywhere a most effeminate qual- 
ity of sensibility, and is the sport of that pseudo-enthusi- 
asm and baseless rapture which we see so often allied 
with the excitement of strong liquors. In taste, or the 
sense of proportions and congruencies, or the harmo- 
nious adaptations, he is perhaps the most defective 
writer extant. 

But if no patriarch of German literature, in the sense 
of having shaped the moulds in which it was to flow, in 
the sense of having disciplined its taste or excited its 
rivalship by classical models of excellence, or raised a 
finished standard of style, perhaps we must concede 
that, on a minor scale, Klopstock did something of that 
service in every one of these departments. His works 
were at least Miltonic in their choice of subjects, if 
ludicrously non-Miltonic in their treatment of those sub- 
jects. And, whether due to him or not, it is undeniable 
that in his time the mother-tongue of Germany revived 
from the most absolute degradation on record, to its 
ancient purity. In the time of Gottsched, the authors 
of Germany wrote a macaronic jargon, in which French 
and Latin made up a considerable proportion of every 
sentence: nay, it happened often that foreign words 
were inflected with German forms; and the whole re- 
sult was such as to remind the reader of the medical 
examination in the Malade Imaginaire of Moli€re, 


*‘ Quid poetea est & faire ? 
Saignare 
Baignare 
Ensuita purgare,”’ &c. 
Now is it reasonable to ascribe some share in the res- 
toration of good to Klopstock, both because his own 


writings exhibit nothing of this most abject euphuism, (a 


SCHILLER. 269 


euphuism expressing itself not in fantastic refinements 
on the staple of the language, but altogether in rejecting 
it for foreign words and idioms,) and because he wrote 
expressly on the subject of style and compositicn ? 

Wieland, meantime, if not enjoying so intense an 
acceptation as Klopstock, had a more extensive one ; 
and it is in vain to deny him the praise of a festive, 
brilliant,and most versatile wit. The Schlegels showed 
the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in 
depreciating Wieland, at a time when old age had laid 
a freezing hand upon the energy which he would once 
have put forth in defending himself. He was the Vol- 
taire of Germany, and very much more than the Vol- 
taire ; for his romantic and legendary poems are above 
the level of Voltaire. But, on the other hand, he was 
a Voltaire in sensual impurity. ‘To work, to carry on 
a plot, to affect his readers by voluptuous impressions, — 
these were the unworthy aims of Wieland; and though 
a good-natured critic would not refuse to make some 
allowance for a youthful poet’s aberrations in this re- 
spect, yet the indulgence cannot extend itself to mature 
years. An old man corrupting his readers, attempting 
to corrupt them, or relying for his effect upon corrup- 
tions already effected, in the purity of their affections, 
is a hideous object; and that must be a precarious influ- 
ence indeed which depends for its durability upon the 
licentiousness of men. Wieland, therefore, except in 
parts, will not last as a national idol ; but such he was 
nevertheless for a time. 

Burger wrote too little of any expansive compass to 
give the measure of his powers, or to found national 
impression; Lichtenberg, though a very sagacious 


270 SCHILLER. 


observer, never rose into what can be called a power, he 
did not modify his age; yet these were both men of ex- 
traordinary talent, and Burger a man of undoubted 
genius. On the other hand, Lessing was merely a man 
of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to 
popularity. His very defects, and the shallowness of 
his philosophy, promoted his popularity ; and by com- 
parison with the French critics on the dramatic or scen- 
ical proprieties he is ever profound. His plummet, if 
not suited to the soundless depths of Shakspeare, was 
able ten times over to fathom the little rivulets of Pari- 
sian philosophy. This he did effectually, and thus 
. unconsciously levelled the paths for Shakspeare, and for 
that supreme dominion which he has since held over 
the German stage, by crushing with his sarcastic 
shrewdness the pretensions of all who stood in the way. 
At that time, and even yet, the functions of a literary 
man were very important in Germany ; the popular mind 
and the popular instinct pointed one way, those of the lit- 
tle courts another. Multitudes of little German states 
(many of which were absorbed since 1816 by the process 
of mediatizing) made it their ambition to play at keeping 
mimic armies in their pay, and to ape the greater mili- 
tary sovereigns, by encouraging French literature only, 
and the French language at their courts. It was this 
latter propensity which had generated the anomalous 
macaronic dialect, of which we have already spoken as 
a characteristic circumstance in the social features of 
literary Germany during the first half of the eighteenth 
century. Nowhere else, within the records of human 
follies, do we find a corresponding case, in which the 
government and the patrician orders in the state, taking 


SCHILLER. py 


for granted, and absolutely postulating the utter worth- 
lessness for intellectual aims of those in and by whom 
they maintained their own grandeur and independence, 
undisguisedly and even professedly sought to ally them- 
selves with a foreign literature, foreign literati, and a 
foreign language. In this unexampled display of scorn 
for native resources, and the consequent collision be- 
tween the two principles of action, all depended upon 
the people themselves. For a time the wicked and 
most profligate contempt of the local governments for 
that native merit which it was their duty to evoke and 
to cherish, naturally enough produced its own justifica- 
tion. Like Jews or slaves, whom all the world have 
agreed to hold contemptible, the German literati found 
it hard to make head against so obstinate a prejudg- 
ment; and too often they became all that they were 
presumed to be. Sint Macenates, non deerunt, Flacce, 
Marones. And the converse too often holds good — 
that when all who should have smiled scowl upon a 
-man, he turns out the abject thing they have predicted. 
Where Frenchified Fredericks sit upon German thrones, 
it should not surprise us to see a crop of Gottscheds 
arise as the best fruitage of the land. But when there 
is any latent nobility in the popular mind, such scorn, 
by its very extremity, will call forth its own counterac- 
tion. It was perhaps good for Germany that a prince 
so eminent in one aspect as Fritz der einziger,! should 
put on record so emphatically his intense conviction, 


1 Freddy the unique ;” which is the name by which the Prussians 
expressed their admiration of the martial and indomitable, though 
somewhat fantastic, king. 


Q72 SCHILLER. 


that no good thing could arise out of Germany. This. 
creed was expressed by the quality of the French minds 
which he attracted to his court. ‘The very refuse and 
dregs of the Parisian coteries satisfied his hunger for 
French garbage; the very offal of their shambles met 
the demand of his palate ; even a Maupertuis, so long 
as he could produce a French baptismal certificate, was 
good enough to manufacture into the president of a 
Berlin academy. Such scorn challenged a reaction: 
the contest lay between the thrones of Germany and 
the popular intellect, and the final result was inevitable. 
Once aware that they were insulted, once enlightened 
to the full consciousness of the scorn which trampled on 
them as intellectual and predestined Helots, even the 
mild-tempered Germans became fierce, and now began 
to aspire, not merely under the ordinary instincts of 
personal ambition, but with a vindictive feeling, and as 
conscious agents of retribution. It became a pleasure 
with the German author, that the very same works 
which elevated himself, wreaked his nation upon their 
princes, and poured retorted scorn upon their most un- 
generous and unparental sovereigns. Already, in the 
reign of the martial Frederick, the men who put most 
weight of authority into his contempt of Germans, — 
Euler, the matchless Euler, Lambert, and Immanuel 
Kant,— had vindicated the preéminence of German 
mathematics. Already, in 1755, had the same Imman- 
uel Kant, whilst yet a probationer for the chair of logic 
in a Prussian university, sketched the outline of that 
philosophy which has secured the admiration, though 
not the assent of all men known and proved to have 
understood it, of all men able to state its doctrines in 


SCHILLER. 273 


terms admissible by its disciples. Already, and even 
previously, had Haller, who wrote in German, placed 
himself at the head of the current physiology. And in 
the fields of science or of philosophy, the victory was 
already decided for the German intellect in competition 
with the French. 

But the fields of literature were still comparatively 
barren. Klopstock was at least an anomaly ; Lessing 
did not present himself in the impassioned walks of lit- 
erature ; Herder was viewed too much in the exclusive 
and professional light of a clergyman; and, with the 
exception of John Paul Richter, a man of most original 
genius, but quite unfitted for general popularity, no com- 
manding mind arose in Germany with powers for levy- 
ing homage from foreign nations, until the appearance, 
as a great scenical poet, of Frederick Schiller. 

The father of this great poet was Caspar Schiller, an 
officer in the military service of the Duke of Wirtem- 
berg. He had previously served as a surgeon in the 
Bavarian army; but on his final return to his native 
country of Wurtemberg, and to the service of his native 
prince, he laid aside his medical character for ever, and 
obtained a commission as ensign and adjutant. In 1763, 
the peace of Paris threw him out of his military em- 
ployment, with the nominal rank of captain. But, hav- 
ing conciliated the duke’s favor, he was still borne on 
the books of the ducal establishment ; and, as a planner 
of ornamental gardens, or in some other civil capacity, 
he continued to serve his serene highness for the rest of 
his life. 

The parents.of Schiller were both pious, upright 
persons, with that loyal fidelity to duty, and that humble 

18 


274 SCHILLER. 


simplicity of demeanor towards their superiors, which 
is so often found among the unpretending natives of 
Germany. It is probable, however, that Schiller owed 
to his mother exclusively the preternatural endowments 
of his intellect. She was of humble origin, the daugh- 
ter of a baker, and not so fortunate as to have received 
much education. But she was apparently rich in gifts 
of the heart and the understanding. She read poetry 
with delight ; and through the profound filial love with 
which she had inspired her son, she found it easy to 
communicate her own literary tastes. Her husband 
was not illiterate, and had in mature life so laudably 
applied himself to the improvement of his own defective 
knowledge, that at length he thought himself capable of 
appearing before the public as an author. His book 
related simply to the subjects of his professional expe- 
rience as a horticulturist, and was entitled Die Baum- 
zucht im Grossen (On the Management of Forests.) 
Some merit we must suppose it to have had, since the 
public called for a second edition of it long after his 
own death, and even after that of his illustrious son. 
And although he was a plain man, of no pretensions, 
and possibly even of slow faculties, he has left behind 
him a prayer, in which there is one petition of sublime 
and pathetic piety, worthy to be remembered by the 
side of Agar’s wise prayer against the almost equal 
temptations of poverty and riches. At the birth of his 
son, he had been reflecting with sorrowful anxiety, not 
unmingled with self-reproach, on his own many dis- 
qualifications for conducting the education of the child. 
But at length, reading in his own manifold imperfections 
but so many reiterations of the necessity that he should 


SCHILLER. 275 


rely upon God’s bounty, converting his very defects 
into so many arguments of hope and confidence in 
heaven, he prayed thus: ‘Oh God, that knowest my 
poverty in good gifts for my son’s inheritance, graciously 
permit that, even as the want of bread became to thy 
Son’s: hunger-stricken flock in the wilderness the pledge 
of overflowing abundance, so likewise my darkness 
may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the measure of 
thy unfathomable light; and because I, thy worm, can- 
not give to my son the least of blessings, do thou give 
the greatest; because in my hands there is not any 
thing, do thou from thine pour out all things; and that 
temple of a new-born spirit, which I cannot adorn even 
with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou irra- 
diate with the celestial adornment of thy presence, and 
finally with that peace that passeth all understanding.” 
Reared at the feet of parents so pious and affection- 
ate, Schiller would doubtless pass a happy childhood ; 
and probably to this utter tranquillity of his earlier 
years, to his seclusion from all that could create pain, 
or even anxiety, we must ascribe the unusual dearth of 
anecdotes from this period of his life ; a dearth which 
has tempted some of his biographers into improving 
and embellishing some puerile stories, which a man of 
sense will inevitably reject as too trivial for his gravity 
or too fantastical for his faith, That nation is happy, 
according to a common adage, which furnishes little 
business to the historian; for such a vacuity in facts 
argues a condition of perfect peace and silent pros- 
perity. That childhood is happy, or may generally be 
presumed such, which has furnished few records of 
external experience, little that has appeared in doing or 


276 SCHILLER. 


in suffering to the eyes of companions; for the child 
who has been made happy by early thoughtfulness, 
and by infantine struggles with the great ideas of 
his origin and his destination, (ideas which settle with 
a deep, dove-like brooding upon the mind of childhood, 
more than of mature life, vexed with inroads from the 
noisy world,) will not manifest the workings of his 
spirit by much of external activity. The fallentis 
semita vite, that path of noiseless life, which eludes 
and deceives the conscious notice both of its sub- 
ject and of all around him, opens equally to the 
man and to the child; and the happiest of all child- 
hoods will have been that of which the happiness has 
survived and expressed itself, not in distinct records, 
but in deep affection, in abiding love, and the hauntings 
of meditative power. 

Such a childhood, in the bosom of en tender- 
ness, was probably passed by Schiller; and his first 
awaking to the world of strife and perplexity happened 
in his fourteenth year. Up to that period his life had 
been vagrant, agreeably to the shifting necessities of the 
ducal service, and his education desultory and domes- 
tic. But in the year 1773 he was solemnly entered as 
a member of a new academical institution, founded by 
the reigning duke, and recently translated to his little 
capital of Stuttgard. This change took place at the 
special request of the duke, who, under the mask of 
patronage, took upon himself the severe control of the 
whole simple family. ‘The parents were probably both 
too humble and dutiful in spirit towards one whom they 
regarded in the double light of sovereign lord and of 
personal benefactor, ever to murmur at the ducal. be- 


SCHILLER. QTd 


hests, far less to resist them. The duke was for them 
an earthly providence; and they resigned themselves, 
together with their child, to the disposal of him who 
dispensed their earthly blessings, not less meekly than 
of Him whose vicegerent they presumed him to be. In 
such a frame of mind, requests are but another name 
for commands ; and thus it happened that a second 
change arose upon the first, even more determinately 
fatal to the young Schiller’s happiness. Hitherto he had 
cherished a day-dream pointing to the pastoral office in 
some rural district, as that which would harmonize best 
with his intellectual purposes, with his love of quiet, 
and by means of its preparatory requirements, best also 
with his own peculiar choice of studies. But this 
scheme he now found himself compelled to sacrifice ; 
and the two evils which fell upon him concurrently in 
his new situation were, first, the formal military disci- 
pline and monotonous routine of duty ; secondly, the 
uncongenial direction of the studies, which were shaped 
entirely to the attainment of legal knowledge, and the 
narrow service of the local tribunals. So illiberal and 
so exclusive a system of education was revolting to the 
expansive mind of Schiller ; and the military bondage 
under which this system was enforced, shocked the as- 
piring nobility of his moral nature, not less than the 
technical narrowness of the studies shocked his under- 
standing. In point of expense the whole establishment 
cost nothing at all to those parents who were privileged 
servants of the duke: in this number were the parents 
of Schiller, and that single consideration weighed too 
powerfully upon his filial piety to allow of his openly 
murmuring at his lot ; while on their part the parents 


278 SCHILLER. 


were equally shy of encouraging a disgust which too 
obviously tended to defeat the promises of ducal favor. 
This system of monotonous confinement was therefore 
carried to its completion, and the murmurs of the young 
Schiller were either dutifully suppressed, or found vent 
only in secret letters to a friend. In one point only 
Schiller was able to improve his condition; jointly with 
the juristic department, was another for training young 
aspirants to the medical profession. To this, as prom- 
ising a more enlarged scheme of study, Schiller by 
permission transferred himself in 1775. But whatever 
relief he might find in the nature of his new studies, he 
found none at all in the system of personal discipline 
which prevailed. 

Under the oppression of this detested system, and by 
pure reaction against its wearing persecutions, we learn 
from Schiller himself, that in his nineteenth year he 
undertook the earliest of his surviving plays, the Rob- 
bers, beyond doubt the most tempestuous, the most vol- 
canic, we might say, of all juvenile creations anywhere 
recorded. He himself calls it ‘‘a monster,” and a mon- 
ster it is; but a monster which has never failed to con- 
vulse the heart of young readers with the temperament 
of intellectual enthusiasm and sensibility. True it is, and 
nobody was more aware of that fact than Schiller himself 
in after years, the characters of the three Moors, father 
and sons, are mere impossibilities ; and some readers, 
in whom the judicious acquaintance with human life in 
its realities has outrun the sensibilities, are so much 
shocked by these hypernatural phenomena, that they 
are incapable of enjoying the terrific sublimities which 
on that basis of the visionary do really exist. A poet, 


SCHILLER. 279 


perhaps Schiller might have alleged, is entitled to as- 
sume hypothetically so much in the previous positions 
or circumstances of his agents as is requisite to the 
basis from which he starts. It is undeniable that 
Shakspeare and others have availed themselves of this 
principle, and with memorable success. Shakspeare, 
for instance, postulates his witches, his Caliban, his 
Ariel: grant, he virtually says, such modes of spiritual 
existence or of spiritual relations as a possibility ; do 
not expect me to demonstrate this, and upon that single 
concession [| will rear a superstructure that shall be self- 
consistent ; every thing shall be internally coherent and 
reconciled, whatever be its external relations as to our 
human experience. But this species of assumption, on 
the largest scale, is more within the limits of credibility 
and plausible versimilitude when applied to modes of 
existence, which,-after all, are in such total darkness to 
us, (the limits of the possible being so undefined and 
shadowy as to what can or cannot exist,) than the very 
slightest liberties taken with human character, or with 
those principles of action, motives, and feelings, upon 
which men would move under given circumstances, 
or with the modes of action which in. common prudence 
they would be likely to adopt. The truth is, that, as a 
coherent work of art, the Robbers is indefensible ; but, 
however monstrous it may be pronounced, it possesses 
a power to agitate and convulse, which will always ob- 
literate its great faults to the young, and to all whose 
judgment is not too much developed. And the best 
apology for Schiller is found in his own words, in re- 
cording the circumstances and causes under which 
this anomalous production arose. ‘ ‘To escape,” says 


280 SCHILLER. 


he, “from the formalities of a discipline which was. 
odious to my heart, I sought a retreat in the world of 
ideas and shadowy possibilities, while as yet I knew 
nothing at all of that human world from which I was 
harshly secluded by iron bars. Of men, the actual 
men in this world below, I knew absolutely nothing 
at the time when I composed my Robbers. Four 
hundred human beings, it is true, were my fellow- 
prisoners in this abode ; but they were mere tautologies 
and reiterations of the self-same mechanic creature, 
and like so many plaster casts from the same original 
statue. Thus situated, of necessity I failed. In mak- 
ing the attempt, my chisel brought out a monster, of 
which [and that was fortunate] the world had no type 
or resemblance to show.” 

Meantime this demoniac drama produced very oppo- 
site results to Schiller’s reputation. Among the young 
men of Germany it was received with an enthusiasm 
absolutely unparalleled, though it is perfectly untrue 
that it excited some persons of rank and splendid ex- 
pectations (as a current fable asserted) to imitate Charles 
Moor in becoming robbers. On the other hand, the 
play was of too powerful a cast not in any case to have 
alarmed his serenity the Duke of Wurtemberg ; for it 
argued a most revolutionary mind, and the utmost 
‘audacity of self-will. But besides this general ground 
of censure, there arose a special one,in a quarter so 
remote, that this one fact may serve to evidence the ex- 
tent as well as intensity of the impression made. The 
territory of the Grisons had been called by Spiegelberg, 
one of the robbers, “the Thief’s Athens.” Upon this 
the magistrates of that country presented a complaint 


SCHILLER. 281 


to the duke ; and his highness having cited Schiller to 
his presence, and severely reprimanded him, issued a 
decree that this dangerous young student should hence- 
forth confine himself to his medical studies. 

The persecution which followed exhibits such extra- 
ordinary exertions of despotism, even for that land of 
irresponsible power, that we must presume the duke to 
have relied more upon the hold which he had upon 
Schiller through his affection for parents so absolutely 
dependent on his highness’s. power, than upon any 
laws, good or bad, which he could have pleaded as his 
warrant. Germany, however, thought otherwise of the 
new tragedy than the serene critic of Wurtemburg: it 
was performed with vast applause at the neighboring 
city of Mannheim ; and thither, under a most excusable 
interest in his own play, the young poet clandestinely 
went. On his return he was placed under arrest. And 
soon afterwards, being now thoroughly disgusted, and, 
with some reason, alarmed by the tyranny of the duke, 
Schiller finally eloped to Mannheim, availing himself of 
the confusion created in Stuttgard by the visit of a 
foreign prince. 

At Mannheim he lived in the house of Dalberg, a 
man of some rank and of sounding titles, but in Mann- 
heim known chiefly as the literary manager (or what is 
called director) of the theatre. ‘This connection aided 
in determining the subsequent direction of Schiller’s 
talents; and his Fiesco, his Intrigue and Love, his Don 
Carlos, and his Maria Stuart, followed within a short 
period of years. None of these are so far free from 
the faults of the Robbers as to merit a separate notice ; 
for with less power, they are almost equally licentious. 

19 


282 SCHILLER, 


Finally, however, he brought out his Wallenstein, ‘an 
immortal drama, and, beyond all competition, the near- 
est in point of excellence to the dramas of Shakspeare. 
The position of the characters of Max Piccolomini and 
the Princess Thekla is the finest instance of what, 
in a critical sense, is called relief, that literature offers. 
Young, innocent, unfortunate, among a camp of am- 
bitious, guilty, and blood-stained men, they offer a depth 
and solemnity of impression which is equally required 
by way of contrast and of final repose. 

From Mannheim, where he had a transient love affair 
with Laura Dalberg, the daughter of his friend the di- 
rector, Schiller removed to Jena, the celebrated univer- 
sity in the territory of Weimar. The grand duke of 
that German Florence was at this time gathering around 
him the most eminent of the German intellects ; and he 
was eager to enroll Schiller in the body of his professors. 
In 1799 Schiller received the chair of civil history ; and 
not long after he married Miss Lengefeld, with whom 
he had been for some time acquainted. In 1803 he 
was ennobled; that is, he was raised to the rank of 
gentleman, and entitled to attach the prefix of Von to 
his name. His income was now sufficient for domestic 
comfort and respectable independence ; while in the 
society of Goethe, Herder, and other eminent wits, he 
found even more relaxation for his intellect, than his 
intellect, so fervent and so self-sustained, could require. 

Meantime the health of Schiller was gradually under- 
mined: his lungs had been long subject to attacks of 
disease ; and the warning indications which constantly 
arose of some deep-seated organic injuries in his pul- 
monary system ought to have put him on his guard for 


4 


SCHILLER. 283 


some years before his death. Of all men, however, it 
is remarkable that Schiller was the most criminally neg- 
ligent of his health; remarkable, we say, because for a 
period of four years Schiller had applied himself seri- 
ously to the study of medicine. The strong coffee, and 
the wine, which he drank, may not have been so inju- 
rious as his biographers suppose ; but his habit of sitting 
up through the night, and defrauding his wasted frame 
of all natural and restorative sleep, had something in it 
of that guilt which belongs to suicide. On the 9th of 
May, 1805, his complaint reached its crisis. Early in 
the morning he became delirious ; at noon his delirium 
abated ; and at four in the afternoon he fell into a gen- 
tle unagitated sleep, from which he soon awoke. Con- 
scious that he now stood on the very edge of the grave, 
he calmly and fervently took a last farewell of his 
friends. At six in the evening he fell again into sleep, 
from which, however, he again awoke once more to 
utter the memorable declaration, “that many things 
were growing plain and clear to his understanding.” 
After this the cloud of sleep again settled upon him; a 
sleep which soon changed into the cloud of death. 
This event produced a profound impression through- 
out Germany. The theatres were closed at Weimar, 
and the funeral was conducted with public honors. The 
position in point of time, and the peculiar services of 
Schiller to the German literature, we have already 
stated: it remains to add, that ya person he was tall, 
and of a strong bony structure, but not muscular, and 
strikingly lean. His forehead was lofty, his nose aqui- 
line, and his mouth almost of Grecian beauty. With 
other good points about his face, and with auburn hair, 


284 SCHILLER. 


it may be presumed that his whole appearance was 
pleasing and impressive, while in latter years the char- 
acter of sadness and contemplative sensibility deepened 
the impression of his countenance. We have said 
enough of his intellectual merit, which places him in 
our judgment at the head of the Trans-Rhenish litera- 
ture. But we add in concluding, that Frederick von 
Schiller was something more than a great author; he 
was also in an eminent sense a great man; and his 
works are not more worthy of being studied for their 
singular force and originality, than his moral character 
from its nobility and aspiring grandeur. 


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